More and more gutters!

Apparently I looked at an advertisement for gutters, or hung my mouse too long over an advertisement for gutters, and my feed is full off ads for gutters once again. Not the kind you might find on a tie-stall barn but the kind that is common suburban houses to direct rainwater away from the foundation and doorways on wet days. Clicking on the ad brings you to an advertisement for leaf-fitter, as leaves in your gutter apparently are the bane of suburban homeowners, as they get wet, clog up, which causes the gutter to get heavy and fall off the roof, or if the gutter is made out iron, then rot out.

I am not opposed to gutters as they serve an important purpose but I seems like too often water collected on roofs is wasted. Some of it is the instance of suburban homeowners on their cheap asphalt shingle roofs that turn otherwise clean water into a chemical soup of oils and rock dust as the water drips off it. Quiet and slower at releasing the rain, it is taken away as a toxic stew and discarded into lawns and sewers. But what if gutters could be part of a rainwater collection system? Filtered for clean drinking water – or at least used for watering plants, gardens and livestock? It seems like a roof, and gutters could do a lot more then be some kind of woke suburban house accessory.