Rain Barrel Instructions

It has come to my attention that several people want to know just how I made my rain barrels. I think I have enough in the way of pictures to thoroughly explain this with little confusion, but just in case, I will take more pictures of the process when I get some new barrels and add them later.

To begin, you find a barrel. You cannot use just any barrel if you plan on 1.) keeping your plants alive and healthy or 2.) consuming the products of your specific plants. Basically what I'm talking about is getting your hands on "food grade" barrels. These can be 55 gallon blue drums that have held vegetables, pickles, water...or they might be brand new and have never contained anything. I prefer pickle barrels, which can be obtained conveniently nearby and are definitely safe to use.

There are just a few simple steps to consider before you are all set. Once you have the barrel chosen, you have to get a few parts from your local hardware store to make everything work. Since this project is purely objective, you can decide how best to make your barrel function. I choose to go cheap and simple so this is what I buy:

1 - "Food grade" barrel (55-58 gallons)

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1 - Brass 1/2" hose bib (faucet to get water out the bottom)

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1 - Brass 3/4"x1/2" hose adapter (overflow connector)

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2 - Electrical conduit nuts (To hold the faucet and overflow)

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4 - Reducing washers

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1 - Tube of silicone waterproof sealer

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1 - Can of spray on, non-toxic shellac

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Once you have all of this, you bore 2 holes in the barrel. Depending on where you want your overflow to go, you can either line these holes up (one near the top of the barrel and one very close to the bottom) or you can offset the overflow to redirect the runoff water. Since I was setting my barrels up in series to collect more water, I set my overflow 90 degrees to the left of my spigot.

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In this picture, you can see that once the barrel is up on the stand, the faucet will drop water away from the house, but the overflow will direct water from the top of the barrel into the one next to it.

The top of the barrel is also something to consider. Some systems I've seen have a sealed assembly to get water from the downspout into the barrel.

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The problem that I have with a sealed system is that I have a giant oak tree that canvases most of my back yard and part of my roof. If any amount of leaf matter was to fall into the gutter and go down the spout, it would be a task to take everything apart to clear a clog. I opted to have an open top system and to set my downspout to simply dump water onto the barrel's lid like this:

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By boring holes all the way around, I assure even drainage and collection and then I finished the lid by stretching some fiberglass screen underneath the lid before screwing it on. The water isn't "filtered" but it does come through quite clear of debris.

Now comes the tricky part: assembly. After you bore your holes for the faucet and the overflow, you take a washer on the outside and one on the inside followed by a nut on the inside of each. I also used the silicone to seal the washers so there was no leaking around the threads of the hose adapter or the hose bib. Finally, I spray shellac on the inside of each fixture to prevent any major corrosion of the steel nuts and washers. I only recently made this discovery after using my barrels for a season and seeing the terrible rust that these nuts and washers build up. They aren't made for this kind of wet situation so there is no coating or galvanization to them. You might be able to find these supplies in a stainless or galvanized version, but I doubt they will be as inexpensive.

Here is a picture of another barrel I did next to my garden:

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I aligned the spigot and overflow on this one since there were already holes in the tank. I also had no major plans to set this one up in a series, so it made sense to line them up. Here is a close up of the assembled hose bib:

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Not too shabby if you are careful when you bore the holes.

And there you have it. Now for the price. You can buy barrels like these or fancier starting around $50 or $60 and going up to as much as $200 or more. I paid $20 for the barrel and about another $10 for the metal supplies. The tube of silicone was about $4 and the can of shellac ran me $8, but remember that you use very little of both and therefore the total cost of such an item is negligible. 

So basically, for about $30 you can have a terra cotta like barrel containing 55-58 gallons of water to use on anything you need to water.

Now I will add some info to answer frequently asked questions.

You don't get enough pressure from these to run a sprayer. These barrels, even raised up a few feet are better for filling watering cans than for spraying a flower bed. The only system I have found to work reasonably well is to attach a soaker hose to the barrel. There is enough pressure build-up to force a small amount of water out of the soaker into a garden evenly. Think of it this way: your house faucet has between 40 and 60 psi coming out. For every 2.5 feet you raise a rain barrel, you get 1 psi. Raised 10 feet, you get 4 lbs of pressure...yeah.

In a heavy rain that lasts a couple hours, you can easily fill a 55 gallon barrel. This depends on the size of roof you are draining into the barrel, but most of the time, if you connect to a long gutter, you have a lot of water collection happening.

At the pace of 1-2 psi, it can take a pretty significant amount of watering to empty 55 gallons. When you are using a barrel to water your garden, you tend to be directing the water onto the most important areas, the base of the plants. This means no over watering or wasted water from a sprinkler, so the water tends to go a bit farther than you would think.

I raise my barrels up for both convenience as well as extra pressure. You also may have to take the grade or slope of your property into account when placing your barrels. If your garden is uphill from your barrels and you want to use a hose, you may run into pressure problems since the end of the hose needs to be lower than the connection to the barrel. You can build stands for your barrels like I have, or you can simply set them up on cinder blocks. The options are limited only by your imagination. I just saw this picture online, showing a really nice setup:

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So there you have it. I hope this guide is helpful and I will be updating the pictures soon to provide close up step-by-step images to compliment the directions.