Pittsburgh Garden Experiment

as of yet i haven't found any barrels that don't leach bpa's, except for either expensive ones or wood barrels (also expensive).  i want to collect rainwater but don't know if the trade-off is worth it.

Nice.  I've been scoping out ways to... reuse? harness? graywater myself - I pay exhorbitant sewage taxes (it's a long, sordid tale, my municipality turned a 50million EPA fine into 92 million in debt, then decided to tax us to fix it) so my sewage bill goes down drastically with judicious water consumption.  A lot of the sources I've been looking in to have scary 24 hour rules about graywater, something that I don't understand (isn't it dependent on what is in the water?).  Do you have any links?

You don't have that lovely hard pan clay that seems to be pervasive in our parts, do you? If not, cattails sound very cool - they bring back memories of summer camp.  Are they perrenials or self seeding annuals, or what?

Oh, you just gave me an idea for how I can hook up a barrel to my upstairs toilet by setting it on my sunroom roof... I have some math to do to see if the structure can handle it, but how cool would that be?

I have a grand plan which involves 5 rain barrels, 4 of which will actually be collecting rain.  One of those four will be feeding my washing machine and possibly a toilet, the 5th barrel is going to catch the water discharged by the washing machine and using a sump pump I will move this water to the top of my backyard where i will have a gravel filled trench planted with cattails to hold the water until it can soak into the ground.

-Troy

I bought used barrels (yeah, they used to hold windshield washer fluid, but diluted methane is volitile and after being washed and rinsed and left to sit, no more harmful than the roof, gutters, or pollution in the rain) for 5$ off craigslist, they were a hike away, somewhere north west of butler.  You can find them closer to the city for 12$ each.  They're the same size as the smaller ones you see for sale at the crunchier grocery stores, I think something like 75 gallons. 

I plan on connecting them up this way: http://www.instructables.com/id/High-Volume-Rain-Barrel/