The first rule of building a rain barrel is: know that water flows down hill. This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many people think that just because they have 1500 lbs of water attached to a small hose or pipe that that water should just blast out of that hose with tremendous force and be able to reach any height. That's just not the case. If the water level in your barrels is not higher than your toilet tank, shower head, or washing machine faucet then you will not be able to use your rainwater for those purposes. I could explain the math, but it's easier to use an analogy: if you put a hose down to the bottom of a lake, water will not spray out the other end like a fire hydrant, no matter how heavy the lake is or how small the hose is. This is why we put rainbarrels up on blocks. It is easy to collect rainwater to water your garden or fill buckets (which can be used to wash clothes, fill fish tanks, etc), or fill a pool. For anything above the ground, you need to be more creative in your engineering. With that out of the way, let's go over how to build a simple rainbarrel setup.
The picture above shows my rainbarrels in progress. I wanted to wait to post this blog until they were complete, but this topic has been getting a lot of interest so I decided to put this up as a starting place. Note, I've already broken one of the first rules of rainbarrels by using white barrels.
Rule #2: Use a translucent barrel. The white barrels allow light to pass through, which can promote algae growth. I plan to correct this by painting the barrels. I plan to do a Super Mario theme, with "?" blocks underneath, bright green pipes on top, scenery from different levels on each of the barrels, and Super Mario figurines on top. Obviously, I'll post new pictures when this is complete.
The third rule is to use clean barrels. Typically, bung top barrels like these range from $20-$35 used and you can find them fairly clean. I found these barrels for $5 each and they had previously been used to store vegetable oil by a guy that was making biodiesel. The vegetable oil was sticky and exceedingly difficult to clean, so I just let it. I figures the oil would float, so it may never come out, and if it did then it's just vegetable oil. It's biodegradable and shouldn't do any harm. Either way, I would have preferred to use clean barrels.
Note that the barrels are connected at the bottom by a common line of 1" PVC pipe. I could have done direct connections from one barrel to the next, but then each barrel would need an "in" and an "out" at the bottom, resulting in more holes required, more material, and higher cost. I did splurge a little by adding ball valves between each of the barrels. This was done in case I need to add or remove barrels from the system (I will eventually add more barrels), I can do so without having to drain the whole system. However, I suppose it would have been cheaper and easier to just keep a 1" PVC cap on hand in case I need to plug a pipe while I am working on it.
You'll also need a connector that is 3/4" female garden hose thread on one end (to allow you to screw in the hose spigot) and is able to connect to your common PVC pipe (I recommend a 1" slip fit). There are many connectors that allow a swivel for screwing in the hose, but since you will be connecting a spigot (so once it is rotated in the correct position you will not need to rotate it again) I would avoid the swivel. The rubber seal used to allow the swivel action can be prone to leaking. And presumably, you will be storing water for a long time (throughout the summer), so leaking would be bad.
For my system, I decided to replace the downspout with a chain. It has a nice look and does a good job of getting the rain into the barrel without the mess of routing the downspout or finding/cutting the correct pipe lengths/bends.
Note: Despite some controversy over rainwater collection in Utah, Washington, and Colorado over the past decade, rainwater collection is now legal in all 50 states. However, this is not the case in all countries around the world. If rainwater collection is illegal in your area then I encourage you to stand up and fight for your right to put a bucket outside. Most public utilities would encourage rainwater collection, as it reduces their need to sanitize water to drinking standards.
Hopefully you've learned at least a couple things here, and maybe you're excited to build your own. Include your comments and questions below. Link to your rainbarrel photo album. I'd love to see new designs. Thanks!
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