Rainbarrels

Rain barrels are a great way to collect and store rain water for later use in your garden. This will help you do your part to reduce water consumption
during the drought, while saving money while watering your garden.

Things that I think are important in a rain barrel:
- over 50 gallons
- spigot as low on the barrel as possible
- large overflow tube
- overflow tube as high on the barrel as possible
- fine screen on input from downspout
- less than $50

I'm picky; so, I made my own barrel. I used a barrel that was used for diet coke; any kind of barrel will work as long as it is water tight and did not
contain chemicals. My course of action meant spending time on the plumbing isle of the hardware store. Thank you Lord for helpful employees. It cost me
roughly $30 to build a barrel.

The filter is a fine mesh metal colander from the dollar
store; a side benefit is that the whole in the barrel
doesn't have to be precise. Note the use of a flexible
downspout adapter.

Overflow tube should be at least 2" to be able to keep up
with the flow from a heavy rain. There is a threaded PVC
fitting on the inside and outside of the barrel that screw
together. I used plumbers putty to prevent leakage. The
overflow pipe should take the water well away from your
house foundation.

This photo shows the spigot at the bottom of the barrel. The
next time I build a rainbarrel, I will have the spigot plumbed
to the very bottom of the barrel; but, this works well. I use
gravity to feed the water to the targets; but, pumps can be
added. Also, the barrel must be high enough to allow access
to the spigot. The land is sloped next to this barrel; the
bricks are used to level the barrel. If you need to
significantly raise the barrel, retaining wall blocks do a good
job. I've put one barrel up on clay flower pots. Be careful
when elevating barrels; when they are full, they are very,
very heavy.