Not in my area. I'm near the upper reaches of a three-layer aquifer - The Trinity Aquifer. In addition, there are numerous faults around me that prevent the aquifer from flowing properly in the area (it's like a fixed pool). The Upper and Lower Trinity layers are very sketchy in this area, and the Middle Trinity, where my well gets its water, is being over-pumped. Even if I could go deeper, it would be cost prohibitive. Wells in the Lower Trinity, a few miles east of me, cost about $120,000 because they are 1,300 feet deep.
When our well was drilled in 2006, the water level was 565' below ground surface. I have an ultrasonic meter on my well head, and as of today, it's 732' below ground surface. The pump is just above the casing screens, sitting at 760'. So, in 18 years, the level has dropped 167', or 9.3' per year. With 28' of water column above my pump, that means I have about 3 years until no more well water.
I've been the elected Board Member for my precinct of our county's groundwater conservation district for about six years because I have a strong interest in understanding our aquifers. On the other side of our county, the very same aquifer has decades to go before there are any issues. I literally own property in the absolute worst part of the county for groundwater!
I have four buildings here, and they all have steel roofs (asphalt shingles and potable water are not compatible). The roofs total about 7,000 square feet, so about 7" of rain will fill it. When it rains here, it really rains. We can get 7" in a few days when it rains. My neighbor just put the same size tank in last fall. We didn't get much rain until early spring. In April and May, we got 14" and his tank is full now.
The way the system works is the gutters collect the water and put it into PVC pipes that go below ground (if you look at the extreme right of the picture I posted above, you can see one of the collection pipes at the corner of the house (we don't have gutters, yet, so it just stops where the downspout will enter once the gutters are installed.) They converge into one pipe that then comes out of the ground and goes up into the top of the tank. The tank is located at a lower elevation than the buildings, so gravity does its thing to move the water. To get it in the house requires a pump, just like a well does. Our system is a little more complicated because the buildings are at different elevations, so I actually have three tanks and will pump water between them, as needed.
A well around here is about $40,000 to $50,000 these days, and my rainwater system is about the same cost. I would just go directly to rainwater collection if doing it over, obviously.
