I stumbled into rainwater collection by accident. I priced the drilling and installing of a water well, and the quoted price was over 18-grand. I started looking for an alternative because bringing a couple of 55 gallon drums full of water from the house wasn't getting it either. One day, we were sitting out in the front porch of the cabin watching a cooling rain shower when my brother and I saw how much water was draining off the roof. I went out and put one of the empty barrels where the water was falling and noticed how quick the drum filled up. That got our grey matter to working. We price some tanks at Tractor Supply Co, other farm and ranch supply companys and the price was about the same, a little over 500 bucks for a 350-gallon tank. We were on the brink of getting one of the tanks when we were at a cookout and a friend of ours from Brownsville told us that we could probably get them way cheaper in Mexico. We ventured in to Matamoros, across the bridge from Brownsville and found a supplier that would sell us same tank (Rotoplus) for 90-bucks. We asked what the regulations would be of us bringing in these tanks from Mexico into the US and there are no restrictions, (only restriction now is you need a passport to cross into Mexico). Long story short, I have 5 1100 liter and 3 2500 liter tanks (the 2500 are over 300 bucks now, so we are staying with the 1100 liter or 300 gallon tanks) being fed by rainwater through gutters. I now catch enough water to not only run my cabin, but have enough water to fill troughs with during these hot summers. All I need is a couple of good  rainfalls in the winter and spring and I will gather over 3000 gallons of rainwater. We are currently bringing additional 1100 liter tanks to put at our feed pens and float control these into our troughs. No electrical power usage to use. I currently fill these troughs with a 12 volt pump and a drum, but we are always looking for improvement and economy. Despite that I have all these tanks to catch the rainwater, we see where water has overflowed after our tanks have gotten full.  To us, that is a waste, so we are going to have a little tank farm behind the cabin so we can catch as much if not all of the rainwater we can. For 18-K that we might have spent on a water well, we can buy a lot of tanks. I'll edit this at a later time and show you the pictures of our tank farm. You will want to go this route.