Easy Green: Rain Barrel Time
In most parts of the country, you don’t have to worry about freezing anymore. It’s time to break out the rain barrels! I actually put mine out several weeks ago. There is a lot of rain this time of year and your barrels will fill up amazingly fast. My water is just sitting there waiting for the new flowers that need some love.
Why have a rain barrel? I have one because I wanted to build a project and I wanted to harvest rain water. It’s not entirely because I’m cheap - part of it is definitely the standard answer - because I can. The less water going into our storm sewers, the better - back to the earth, baby.
There are a few options on rain barrels - buy one or make one yourself. It all depends on the look you’re going for. For me, I made my own. After doing some research, I found that the best recommended barrel material is food-grade plastic. I called up a Coca-Cola bottling plant nearby and they happily gave me as many barrles as I wanted. I could only fit two in the car and I thought that was a good starting point. If you really wanted them to be prettier, you could paint them with some Krylon plastic paint (it’s made for childrens outdoor plastic toys, etc) - but I can’t really recommend spray paint on a green site, right?
Last year, I only hooked up one barrel. That seemed to be pretty sufficient for our watering needs, but since I had the other barrel just staring at me, I decided to daisy chain them together. So right now, I have two 55gal barrels on my deck - about 2 feet above the ground with spigots coming off of them.
Basic setup:
- Food-grade barrel
- Spigot
- Downspout attachment with screen
- Overflow pipe (important)
My Setup
- Downspout into barrel one
- Overflow pipe out of barrel one - flexible sump pump hose
- Spigot near bottom of barrel
- Barb connector near top of barrel one - just below overflow line
- Barb connector in identical spot on barrel two
- Spigot near bottom of barrel
When barrel one fills up, it spills over into barrel two. When barrel two is full, there is no where for the water to go, so it exits from the overflow flexible hose. The barrels are elevated about two feet which is plenty of gravity to water pretty much anything I need.
One big question everyone asks is regarding mosquitoes. Yes, they can be an issue with an open-ended rain barrel. You want to make sure your barrel is as tight as possible or has screen prevening mosquitoes from getting to the water in the first place. If they can’t get in, they can’t lay eggs. Maybe you inherited barrels that have open holes. In this case there are a few options. Instead of contaminating the water with some chemicals, try adding a little veggie oil. The oil will create a barrier at the top of the water and not let the eggs break through. Another option is adding some cider vinegar to the water. This will kill anything that has hatched and deter moquitoes from visiting to lay more eggs.
Glad you were able to get barrels locally. Veggie oil is an urban legend and will not stop mosquitoes. For a great rain barrel kit, downspout filters, downspout diverters and other cool rain barrel stuff check out http://www.aquabarrel.com
This is a great post! I only wish there were rain barrel options for those of us living in the city.
since our roof is 50″ up, and has no gutter systemon the top roof of this 120 year old house…i use bucket to catch the rain.
every threatening forecast sees me rushing with my collection of plastic 5 gal. containers. should the downpour exceed an inch per storm, i also run with raincoat and galoshes, empty the full ones onto the garden and reposition under roof line.
tiresome yet exciting, the water is so soft the chickens also like it best. i do it because it feels–right–it saves on chemicals to treat water and plants grow much better with pure rain.
i do have plans to install barrels by the lower addition where there are gutters. thanks for reminding me.
I have a large continer that fills up when it rains.
The question is how do you efficiently get the water from the barrel to the distant uphill garden?
thank you for explaining how this works, my landlord is intrigued and now I can share some good information with her, I was concern about the mosquito’s
nadine I can imagine you in your galoshes saving raindrops - how cool is that ? Truthfully the buckets are not a bad idea either, as long as they are emptied regularly
Aimee - I imagine you mean condo living - I guess you could use buckets like Nadine. If you have gutters that are accessible, the City of Chicago sells rain barrels for $40 - they’re old olive barrels.
Nadine - that rocks - very funny scene
Mother Earth - If the barrels are sealed, no mosquitoes. You can also buy “natural” tablets that you put in to kill the little buggers
Jason - thanks for letting me know about the Coke source - that seems incredibly promising! I have no idea how I missed this post of yours. That must mean it’s sitting in my Google Reader…which is quite scary now, full of posts waiting to be read!
What a creative solution! We had a rare occurence of rain this morning; wish I’d had a barrel to collect it instead of it running out the gutter. We get less than 12″ of rain annually, but it would still be better than wasting those 12″.