Many homeowners are looking for ways to retain rainwater runoff that otherwise would run off into the ground. contain.waterwallThis is especially important for areas where water is expensive and scarce. Some sites can’t accommodate an underground water storage tank with soils too crumbly or rocky ledge, and few homeowners want to take up large areas of a basement or shed for aboveground tanks. These water fences allow you to store your water in plain sight!

We found two options for storage in relatively thin tanks, shaped and textured to look like stone walls, to provide small niches for plantings as a yard accent. Some options enable a board fence face to be applied to the surface of the water fence to blend in with standard fencing.

Amazingly, for such a small footprint, these 6-inch thick panels can store an amazing amount of water. The new Contain Rainwater Harvesting Wall can hold 71 gallons of water in each panel. The panels are constructed in modular format, so that they may be connected in series to provide as much water storage as desired. The modules are constructed of ultraviolet stabilized polyurethane plastic and come in either sand stone gray or black, which provides an extra geothermal heating benefit.

waterfence1WaterFence Systems’ stores water that is collected in the home’s screened gutters and drained into the interior of the wall units. They also offer an unadorned panel that can be customized with any desired facing. These units are much larger in both dimensions and storage capacity. WaterFence modules measure 6 feet tall by 7 feet wide and 15 inches thick, offering a storage capacity of 240 gallons. The modules are made from 100% recyclable (HDPE) polyethylene and are engineered to stand up to the most stringent building codes.

So how big do you need? A good way to estimate the amount of IMG_3627rainwater your roof might produce is as follows: multiply the square foot area of the roof by the number of inches of rain and multiply by a factor of 0.632 to get the amount in gallons of water that might be collected. For example, a 1,500 square foot roof X two inches of rain X 0.632 = 1,896 gallons.

Once stored the rainwater can be held for drought conditions, used for landscape watering, or even for household use if properly filtered. Additionally, the water fence can be used in forest fire zones to provide fire suppression water and a water barrier in emergencies.