I would like to put a cistern filled by the gutters, but the HOA has rules
“that all such water storage tanks be less than 55 gallons. If the tanks exceeds 55 gallons, it shall be enclosed with the same design as the exterior of the house or other permanent fixture. Larger tanks may be buried underground with no penalty”.
Well hells bells. Anyone who thinks I am going to put up a cistern with field stone around it is crazy. The only place I can dig more than a foot deep is where my garden is located. Every else is about 4 - 6 inches of soil on unknown depths of limestone shelf. I am thinking about two or three 55 gallon barrels at two downspouts.
My neighbor used a rock saw to cut down over 10 feet to build his two story house to meet the HOA code. He got a guy with a rock hammer mounted on a backhoe to jackhammer the holes for two 1500 gallon underground tanks and a pool.
LOL. This makes me glad to be right in the middle of Redneck territory. We have no HOA in our subdivision. There were only a few rules in our contract, which most people ignore with impunity.
Heck, the county doesn’t even have a zoning authority, so if there is not state law agin it, we pretty much do what we want.
You know would it work to move a lot of your garden to raised beds over the limestone and free up the garden space for the underground cistern?
I’ll tell you what we decided to do. We bought an above ground swimming pool on sale at Walmart. It cost less than $300.00. It provides 4000 gallon capacity. We can let water from the roof fill it up during spring rains, cover it and put mosquito dunks or float veggie oil to prevent tadpoles and mosquitos and we are good to go.
You could swim in yours a few times at the beginning and mosquito dunks are not harmful to humans. There are articles about having “natural” swimming pools which are supposed to be better for the environment anyway.
IIRC even if you use the pool and keep it up with chlorine, you can set that water out for a day or so and the chlorine will be gone. By the end of summer it may be more of a wading pool though.LOL
How about a row of 50 gallon barrels connected by a pipe hidden somewhere around the house. As a barrel fills it will begin piping into the barrel connected by a pipe. Just an idea.