FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi guys I want to share with you how I collect rain water for my carnivorous plants. This may not work for everyone. It occurred from trail and error. First off all I found this water pipe in my garden which led of from my roof. First I make sure it has not other pipes leading from the tap water inside. It look like this.



It leads of into a drain. then removing the drain cover I realized I could collect rain water from it easily.


This is how I do it:

I first collected all these materials I found in my house/garden.


A bottle with or without cap




A tub that fits in to the drain


Small plant pot that fits into the tub.


a funnel to ensure we do not make a mess with the water.


A brick to levitate the tub you may not need this.


Last of all a knife you will need this if you have a bottle cap with your bottle.

Now to fit everything in place.

First of all I place the brick at the bottle of the drain.


I then place the tub on top.


Now realizing the water does not flow into the tube i use the small plant pot like this


Now fianly place the cover over the whole set up for protection perposes.



Now while water is being collected I first cleaned the bottle up only using water not chemicals. rinse until the smell in the bottle has faded and the water in the bottle is crystal clear.

As for the knife you need to pierce a hole in the lid this came from trail and error to me as the water will start to smell if it does not have a air flow as of such.



Now wait for rain fall. once water has all been collected you need to bottle it all up.



I collect about 2-3 bottles full within an hour of doing this process.

Sorry if you think I have put to many pictures into this thread I just want to make it as simple as possible. I hope it was educational

ARCC

Also sorry for any spelling mistakes I am dyslexic.

Be careful of water coming out of rain spouts and off roofs as it can contain all kind of nasty stuff that could actually harm your plant.

Better to collect the rain in a bigger vessel away from the house if possible...

ES

Thanks for the great idea. Maybe your invention can be moved away from the house so no contaminants from the roof or spouting.

Innovative! Thanks for sharing. For comparison, I stick a large bowl and a large tupperware out in my lawn when it rains and usually collect 1-3 gallons. I can't use my roof water cause it's really dirty (my roof's old).

Way to think outside the box.

I put 5 gallon buckets where the water runs off my roof. I'll get around 20 gallons after a good rain.

I've never understood what chemicals may come from your roof that will harm a plant. If the ppm is below 50 you should be fine. I mean if roof run-off was that bad for plants there would be far less lawns and other yard plants in the world. Now some roofs may just leach a lot of minerals into the run-off and certainly that would be bad, but a TDS meter will quickly give you that info.

My feeling is that a lot of the idea that roof water could hurt your plants is based on people feeling it could be bad and not based on actual evidence. I say if you can collect roof run-off do it and test it. If it's under 50ppm use it and if you notice a decline in your plants then don't use it.

In my case my roof water is always brown/gray and has a ppm of about 35. I don't know what's in it so I don't use it.

xr280xr wrote:In my case my roof water is always brown/gray and has a ppm of about 35. I don't know what's in it so I don't use it.

See, that makes sense though. Even though your PPM says it's ok, it doesn't pass your visual inspection. But you're not writing it off by virtue of the fact that it's roof run-off, which I see here often.