Water non-potable water

[exiled2tx]

We leave in a subdivision where the HOA supplies irrigation to the yard 2-3 times a week.

The water in non-potable. It comes from man made lakes which catch rain, run-off, etc including the street run-off. (Nothing that would be considered sewage - that is a separate system).

How suitable is this for fruit trees and vegetable gardens? There are a lot of fruit trees around and nobody seems to care about the source of the water. Not a lot of ground level vegetable gardens though.....

 

[RememberGoliad]

Rain runoff and street runoff... roughly what you'd get if you dug a tank anywhere on the road side of your own property. So, would you use THAT to water with? If so, then there's not much of a difference.

I'm in the Hill Country and have started on a rock and mortar cistern for our solar pump to fill from a deep well for household use. If this goes as-planned, I'm going to build a second, larger one on the down end of the house and carport metal roof to catch for garden and stock watering. AND potty flushing, if it ever comes down to that. Possibly even drinking after a filter run. Never say never. Now that I think of it, I'm going to build it with plumbing to add on a sand-and-charcoal type filter someday in the future. Never hurts to have a backup to the backup. (Grid powered well pump and pressure tank is current primary, solar and gravity with the rock cistern is backup, and the rain-catch with sand filter would be ITS backup )