Rain Barrels

Hi everyone!!

Just wanted to offer a more in depth writing on the rain barrels I made.  I acquired three 55 gallon drums from a place that does business with my company.  It was nice that the barrels were free, but they came from a place that does uniform cleaning and as such had a fair amount of thick detergent left in them.  This added an hour or two to the amount of time it took to prepare the barrels because they needed to be cleaned out.

After the barrels were clean, it was time to put in the spigots.  Basically I went to the Home Depot and said I wanted to put a spigot in a barrel.  Stan (the plumbing guy) said, "Well, this is what you need."  The part that fits into the barrel is threaded on the end in the barrel and has a female end on the outside. The particular barrels I used made things a little more difficult.  My barrels have no removable cover, and are completely sealed on the top, except for two bung holes.  If I had chosen to cut the tops off, or had removable lids, it would have been much easier to affix the spigot because a nut and rubber washer would have held it on sufficiently.

First I drilled a hole that was appropriately sized for the treads.  Then I used a liberal amount of two part epoxy on the treads and on the barrel where the fitting would attach.  After letting the epoxy set up for a few hours, I put in a bushing that fit the female end and then screwed in a pipe bib for the spigot.

The next step was to cut a hole in the top where the downspout would enter the barrel.  I used a chunk of downspout and traced the outside of it with a marker. Then I drilled two pilot holes and cut the piece out with a saber saw.

After this was done, it was time to get the barrels in place outside.  I used some cement blocks that were in my basement to raise each of the barrels high enough to fit a watering can underneath.  I detached the downspouts and cut them shorter and added a few elbows to get the downspouts to fit into the barrel.

All in all, it took about 6 or 7 hours to get the project done, but the reward was nice.  After the first rainfall, the barrels were all full!!  (and none of them fell over)

I additional problem I didn't foresee is that the barrels get full and the extra water needs to go somewhere.  I drilled a bunch of holes around the top, but when the water gets up there, it shoots out and sort of makes a mess of the surrounding landscape.  I haven't fixed mine yet, but the same fitting as was used for the spigot can be used near the top with some pipe attached to run the excess water down on the ground.

Have fun saving water!!

Tim