Do-it-yourself rain barrels
Okay so it’s dumping outside and you need a fun home project that’s both enviro-friendly and can save you some money. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to make some rain barrels.
Okay so it’s dumping outside and you need a fun home project that’s both enviro-friendly and can save you some money. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to make some rain barrels.
First of all, a lot of local municipal sewerage agencies provide discounts on actions you can take to reduce stormwater runoff. In Portland, there’s the Clean River Rewards program where you take certain steps and get discounts on your water bill. The City of Portland also has a ton of info on this stuff. For other areas, contact your local sewerage agency to see if installing rain barrels can qualify you for a discount on your bill. Even if they don’t, you won’t feel bad just absolutely soaking that rich-green grass in the middle of August with water you’ve harvested yourself.
Second, there are a lot of boutique-y, fancy schmancy type rain barrels these days, most of which are gonna set you back some coin. Being both cheap and having underused power tools, I went ahead and made my own DIY, two-barrel system for about $70 and with spare parts. Here’s how.
- Craigslist (Portland)
- a Skil saw
- two door hinges
- a power drill
- a boxcutter
- discarded woodscrews
- a plastic funnel
- two spigots
- two washers
- two female threaded nuts to attach the spigots (in my case I used two short, threaded PVC plumbing ends – it’s hard to find metal ones that big)
- two pieces of old garden hose
- silicone (and caulking gun)
Okay the steps:
- I got two rain barrels off of craigslist for
$25 each. They were sealed, and I needed to open them up to put spigots on
them. So I cut the tops off of each with a Skil saw. Big thanks to my buddy Jeff Parrish
for the help. I still have both of my thumbs because of this man.
- Drill out a hole for the spigot. Make sure
it’s not wider than the thread of the spigot. Put the washer on the
inside. Screw on the nut to fasten the spigot in place.
- Seal the spigot on both sides with a nice bead
of silicone.
- Re-attach your severed lid by screwing in the door hinge to both the lid and the barrel.
- Make sure and create a stable surface that is taller than the surrounding area to put your barrel on. Stacking a couple of cinder blocks works great. I’ll leave it to you to handle the aesthetics.
The next part, making sure the rain water gets in the rain barrels, can also be prohibitively expensive. Some pre-fab rain barrels simply have a screened opening on top where you just point the downspout. Other systems need special parts and adapters for the downspout. But why do all that when you have the parts lying around already? Here’s what I did:
- Cut a hole in your downspout with a boxcutter. Yikes, right? Well you can’t break an omelet…
- Screw the loose ends of the funnel to the outside of the downspout, this will stabilize it, and make sure almost all the water will be directed down the funnel rather than the downspout.
- Attach a length of old garden hose to the end
of the funnel. Take a lighter and heat up the cut end before placing it on
so it’s more malleable. It'll stick fast when it cools down and shrinks up.
Wa-la. You’re good to go. I’ve had feedback from friends that I’m supposed to create an overflow valve as well, but I haven’t needed it. Just switch the hose to other barrel when the first gets full. I filled my first barrel in about four days and about an inch and a half of rain. I sealed it up with silicone to make sure the water wouldn’t go stagnant or host mosquitoes. When both barrels get full, just seal ‘em up or let some excess water of spigot. I simply redirected my hose to carry the water away from my house...until I can get another barrel to fill.
Have you built rain barrels? Got serious questions about my craftsmanship? Let’s hear em!
