Setting up a rain barrel

This past summer I set up my first rain barrel. Rain barrels have gotten popular in recent decades as more people have become interested in conserving water. I think of them as a kind of water savings account, where I can store extra water for a time when I need it. Instead of “saving for a rainy day,” this is saving from a rainy day! And it provides liquidity!

Okay, enough with the lame jokes. Overall this was a pretty simple project, though it does require some time and forethought.

Basically, a rain barrel system diverts water from the downspout to a storage tank for later use. You can buy these barrels at home improvement stores, but I got one similar to this EarthMinded RainStation model at a discounted price through a county program. Check to see if your city or county offers something similar.

I should say at the outset that a rain barrel is not a “set it and forget it” kind of thing. You need to have a plan for the water. It’s coming off your roof so it’s not potable, but you can use it to irrigate lawns and gardens. Whatever you do, the system is going to work best if you keep using the water rather than letting it stagnate for months in the barrel.

Once I had a rain barrel and ideas of what to water, I was ready to set it up. As usual with outdoor projects, a big part of the work is choosing and preparing the site. I found a good spot near a downspout in a mostly unused corner of the backyard.

My barrel has a 50-gallon capacity, which means that it weighs several hundred pounds when full. So I needed to have a solid and level base. It’s possible to put a rain barrel directly on the ground, but that wouldn’t have been a good idea for my model because it has a spigot right at the bottom. If the barrel isn’t elevated, that spigot is difficult to access.

I decided to make a simple stand out of cinder blocks and pavers, an idea I got from this blog post by The Southern Gardener. The process was a bit like building the world’s smallest patio. I first dug out a 2-foot square hole to a depth of three inches. (Sorry for picture quality — this was a sunny morning and the shadows of my milkweed plants got in the way!)

Then I dumped in a bag of paver base gravel, followed by a bag of paver base sand. I used a two-foot level to make sure that my foundation was even (again watched by menacing milkweed shadows).

For the base itself, I laid down a first layer of four one-foot-square pavers, which I leveled. Next I arranged four cinder blocks on top of the pavers in the pattern shown below.

(A note about buying cinder blocks: they have a few different variations. I wanted blocks with outside faces that were entirely smooth. When I went to load these blocks at our home improvement store, I found that there were two different styles being sold as the same item. So I had to sort through the blocks to find the smooth ones that I wanted.) 

The last layer was another set of four pavers on top of the cinder blocks, once again leveled. The finished product elevates the barrel about a foot off the ground.

This short video by Rain Brothers shows how to build a slightly different stand with the same materials.

I’ll admit that this base is a quick-and-dirty solution, definitely the inexpensive route. It seems to work fine, but ideally I might want something more like this wooden stand by The Handyman’s Daughter, which holds the barrel a bit more securely.

(If you want a whole lot more examples, check out this list on the Everyday Old House blog.)

With the base completed, I needed to set up the rain barrel itself. The most exciting part here was drilling a hole smack in the middle of my downspout. Was I nervous about doing that? A little!

My rain barrel kit came with two hole saws, one to drill a hole in the rain barrel itself and one to drill into the downspout. This is definitely a “measure twice, cut once” situation. Also, the downspout cut is going into sharp metal, so safety glasses are a must and gloves are a good idea.

Before drilling, be sure to position the rain barrel correctly, on the elevated stand if you have one. I suspect the models differ a bit, but for mine I needed to cut the downspout hole such that the fill hose would slope slightly downward into the side of the barrel. After cutting that hole, I squeezed in the diverter that would reroute the water and attached the fill hose to the barrel. Now everything was hooked up.

My rain barrel has two outlets, one at the bottom and one a little ways up. One of these could be configured as a spigot with a shut-off valve, and the other with threads for a hose. I put the spigot at the bottom so I could put a watering can right underneath it.

I decided to use the hose with the higher outlet because the flow relies on gravity alone, so I figured that I would get more pressure if the hose had a higher starting point (physics!).

After a rain, I was eager to try out the water dispensing system. The barrel fills surprisingly quickly; it’s completely full after a single good rainstorm. I found that the hose spigot worked well with my watering can. For the upper hose attachment, I tried a soaker hose but didn’t seem to be able to get enough pressure. I switched to a sprinkler hose — the kind with the tiny holes — and that worked fine. Of course you need a place to water that’s within reach of your hose.

The only problem with the hose attachment is that it has a simple plastic cap on it, so when I remove the cap the water shoots out until I can get the hose end screwed in. I suspect I could probably upgrade this with a shutoff valve to make it easier to use.

One last thing: the rain barrel needs to be drained in the winter, at least in my cold climate. I’d recommend disconnecting the drain hose well ahead of the first freeze so you can draw down the water over the fall months without the barrel refilling. Otherwise you may end up like me with a barrel full of water in mid-November, long after your flowers and vegetables have died back for the winter. Now that I finally have it emptied, I’m planning to leave it outside because it’s kind of a large item to store.

Overall, I found the rain barrel to be a worthwhile experiment. Who knows? Maybe I’ll add another one next spring.

Feel free to share your rain barrel experiences in the comments!