Staggering Amount of Water

Recently we were asked to measure for a local College Station apartment complex for the rainwater harvesting potential. We knew there would be plenty of roof space for harvesting but the sheer amount of water that can be collected was mind blowing, even for us since we work with these numbers every day. 

If we collect from every surface in this apartment complex, one inch of rain harvests 53,181 gallons of rainwater. Unfortunately it will not be feasible to capture from every surface since we have limited space for tanks to hold the water. On average (taken from data from the past 10 years) we have had 35 inches of rain annually in College Station, Texas. This means that we could capture 1.8 million gallons of water from this one apartment complex alone in town.