Let the drought begin!!!

About 2 weeks ago I bought 3 barrels with the hopes of getting them installed quickly. Planned on getting some work done each night until they were done. Then, it rained for about 2 straight weeks. It was supposed to rain this weekend but the weather has been surprizingly nice. I was able to get 1 of them fully installed and the other 2 are ready to go with the exception of the box I need to build to put them on. The saw's battery ran out so I'll need to build the box later. These barrels will capture rain coming down from our house and allow me to redistribute that water to our plants and flowers.

Rain barrels at Home Depot, Lowes or online run around $100+ for roughly the same size I have. I made all 3 of these for about $80, $100 if you count the boxes I built for them to go on. The companies listed above are just selling the barrels. You may also notice the following differences.
1 - The pre-made versions are made out of trashcan type plastic, an actual barrel is about 3 times as thick and sturdy.
2 - On the pre-made you don't get use of all the capacity, the spicket is a few inches up from the bottom, you will see on mine that the spicket comes out of the bottom.

Here's a couple pics of the finished product. Below is a rough ouline of how to build the rain barrels. I included the outline because as I was building this I found some bits and pieces of the barrels here and there but nothing that really made sense to me. Hopefully this can help other people who are looking to make rain barrel.





1st you have to find a barrel. The Nashville Barrel and Drum (615-799-9449)sells barrels like these for $12 (55 gallon), as stated above you will pay over $100 at most hardware stores. You need to give them a call 1st because they are constantly running out and they are located in Fairview so don't just drive out there! (thursdays and fridays are when they get their shipments so check then) To be honest this added about 3 weeks to my project, waiting and waiting.

Nashville Barrel will not clean them so washing them is up to you, make sure you tell them what they are going to be used for so they don't sell you something that had chemicals. Mine were used to store mouthwash, my flowers should smell minty fresh!

The standard barrel comes with 2 caps on the top. The center of each of these caps it threaded, 1 of these caps will become your spicket. Ultimately this barrel will be upside down. To make the caps completely leak proof some people used glue, some use tephlon tape. My caps looked like they had a couple pretty good gaps in them so I opted for Sylicone caulk. If you opt for the glue it will be very difficult to open the cap back up if needed. With the caulk I should be able to get the caps off and do some maintenance in the fall if I need to.



In the bottom of the barrel you will need to measure and cut a hole. Since this will be the top of the barrel it will be where the water enters. Utimately we will connect our down gutter to the rain barrel with a flex gutter.



1 cap will just need to be sealed. The other cap, which you will turn into your spicket, will need to be drilled out. I found the dremel worked best for this. The contraption you see in this picture is the following.

1 - A 3/4 inch connector is screwed into the cap
2 - A small piece of pvc pipe (about 1.5 inches) to the elbow joint
3 - A 5 inch piece of pvc pipe to get from the elbow to the spicket
4 - There is another connecter between the pvc pipe and the spicket

As stated above the cap is sealed with sylicone, the connectors to the cap and the spicket were sealed with tephlon tape and the pvc pipe to the connector was glued.



Once the barrel and stand are completed you can attach the flex hose gutter to your gutter with a couple of metal screws. The other end goes straight into the barrel where we precut our hole. You'll want to get either a piece of screen or a pool scimmer basket to place in the whole so that you are filtering the water coming from your gutter, if not you'll have many fun times cleaning out your barrel.



The box was just made with some 2x8's and a piece of plywood for the top, I spray painted it and cut a little wedge out for the spicket.

There is also an overflow drain at the top so that water doesn't back up, I don't have a drain line attached yet so I didn't picture it.
Now that the barrels are installed I predict a long dry drought! I'll be having some fun picking out and planting the plants and flowers so these babies get put to good use.

Fun extra's for your rain barrel.

1 - The barrel can be painted by you children if you want it colorful.
2 - You can purchase a drip hose and bury it through your garden, then just attach it to your barrel and when you open it up all the plants and flowers get water right to them.