Rain Barrel Excitement!

First I want to say thank you again to Jan @ Thanks For Today for her Sustainable living project. You can follow the link and read more about it. It was so much fun to join in and read about what everyone else is doing to help the environment and work towards self sustainability. There are people at so many different stages.

Other then a TON of inspiration, I ended up winning the grand prize ( I never win anything!). I Fisker's Rain Barrel. I posted last year pictures and instructions for our homemade rain barrel and we use it a lot! So to have an actual one we thought would be interesting.

It installed a little harder then the homemade one. You have to cut the pipe and get the black diverter squeezed on to the pipe and then the other end goes to the bottom of it. Honestly though the hardest part was getting the lid all the way on. I had to squeeze and bend in order to get it on fully. Otherwise everything else worked really well. Just make sure you have spade bits and a hacksaw around. We have these on hand but I know a lot of people don't.

It's rained since installing and works wonderfully!! My husband is in love already because we can now fully water both sides of our front gardens. This saves us from running a ton of hose all over the yard. We don't have to worry that someone left the hose on and the water is still running, and our bill will be sky high. We will only have to pay to water the canning garden this year. I figure this will save us at least $15 a month. Not to mention saving mom from tripping over hose's :)

Rain Barrels How to :)

Sunday was a great day, had a wonderful visit with family who admired our newly installed rain barrel....
They were even more impressed that it only cost us $5.00 out of pocket.. granted we were gifted with a few items and had the others laying around. If you can get the barrel used it should still only cost you $20.00 at the very most.. ( I love $20 and under money saving projects :)

It was very easy to complete and took Corey and I about 15 minutes.. that included wading through the mess in the garage to find necessary things.

What you need...

• A barrel.. we used a barell that had stored windshield wiper fluid from a lube place. It's a big Blue barrel:) This was given to us.
• A jig saw
• A saw able to cut through metal down spout
• A flex able tube
• A spout that will attach to our hose and turn on and off.
• screws
• caulk
• Pencil
• spade bit and drill

Basically you need to get your barell and find out where you want to set it. Because there was a walk in our way we moved ours off to the side instead of directly under the down spout.

Make sure to rinse your barell out if there was any chemicals in them before. Ours had held wiper fluid so we made sure to rinse it.

Take your flex pipe and gauge where you need to cut on the downspout to reach your barrel. Remember this should be higher then the top of your barell.

Cut your down spout using the saw. Attach pipe with 2 screws.

Take flex tube, put the end on the barrel where you want it and trace around the bottom of it. Take jig saw and cut out hole... Make sure you make the whole tight.

Take the flex pipe and put through hole. Caulk around.

Next take your spigot and find the matching spade bit. Cut hole for spigot, lay a bead of caulk around spigot and put through hole. Screw on. The caulk should flow out around it to form a seal.

There is your rain barel :)

Please let us know how this works for you and if you have any ideas to make it better. We are always open to suggestions!

Our total cost was for the spigot, we had the flex pipe originally at the end of the downspout to direct water away from the walk way. We are planning on building a total of 6 of these to help water our gardens outside.

Happy Water Gathering!!