With about a metre of average yearly rainfall (almost all of it in the winter months), the modus operandi is collect happily in the winter months, but become a careful rain-farmer in the spring and summer. Pollen season on Gabriola is already starting. After a week or two without rain, allow the first solid rain to wash away atmospheric pollution, roof dust, pollen, etc. for an hour or two, before collecting water again. (The essential formula--extensively researched in Australia, the Caribbean and other jurisdictions -- is divert 10 gallons per 1,000 square feet of roof collection surface.) Keep up with this practice until the winter rains return. Swing your fill pipe “off-line” or there are simple, yet very effective, homemade and commercial bypass systems called “first-rain diverters” to help with this. Clean-out roof gutters, screens, roof and piping after pollen season.
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