The little ones who are discreet, leaning against the wall, the well-bellied ones spread out on the ground, the giants anchored in the earth: everything is torn away! Tanks, cisterns and collectors, in plastic, rigid, flexible or concrete, from 300 liters to 20,000 liters… Storing rainwater has become obvious over the last two years. A heavenly manna descending from the gutters, in severe times of drought and inflation.
At Leroy-Merlin, we observe, “since the summer of 2022, a fairly crazy acceleration in sales, going as far as tripling, both for aerial recuperators and for underground tanks, which are increasingly larger in size.” Stockao, the specialist in concrete tanks, has been selling the 10,000 liter tank at random, especially since spring. Customers whose land allows it willingly come back for a second, a third, in a euphoria of liquid accumulation.
After studying business, Cédric Fontaine launched Fontaine Ingénierie in 2005, a design office for rainwater harvesting. “Maybe there was an unconscious connection with my namehe admits. Above all, I had the feeling that water would be the next resource in trouble. » Well seen, it’s been two years since he attended “the explosion of this water recovery market for individuals, driven by the fear of shortage. And by the desire to top up the water in their swimming pool, too.” Its small free simulator (La-banquise.com), put online at the end of 2022, to help size the recuperator (based on water consumption, harvest potential, local rainfall) attracts 400 users per month.
So many markers of a new era, where water no longer flows from a source and where the level of anxiety rises. In a survey by the Water Information Center (CIeau) and the market research specialist Ipsos, in October 2022, 72% of French people said they were affected by the drought. And 86% fear that this will happen regularly. At the beginning of autumn, before heavy rains fell in certain corners of France, 83 departments were hit by water restriction measures… “Prepare now for future droughts”conveniently advises the Ma cisterne ecolo website, by offering flexible tanks that slide under a terrace or into the crawl space of the house. “Despite the decline in the construction of individual houses”, the boss of this Gard company, Florian Fortes, faces “a lot of requests, because the lack of water is very present. And rainwater appears to be a solution.”
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