However, I learn best by watching others, and I was a bit leery of tearing into one of my precious barrels and inadvertently ruining it out of miscalculation or stupidity--I know absolutely nothing about plumbing hardware. I have plans for these big hunks of plastic!
And then, through the serendipity of my life lately, I found a rain barrel mentor: a woman named Sharon that I had met a few months ago at one of the chicken workshops I gave. She & I became friends on Facebook, and I noticed that she makes rain barrels to sell. Ta-da! After a lovely visit at her house, to meet her darling chickies and watch her do a rain barrel demo, I was armed with notes on the plumbing hardware I'd need and some insider tips she has figured out through trial and error.
Now, I don't know about you, but it always seems that I have almost the right tools for a given job. And so, more often than not, I end up slaving away with a cheap hand tool and a lot of perspiration in order to get the results that I'm after. No exception here. I will spare you the ridiculous amount of hacking, swearing and maneuvering that culminated in the finished product...but I will tell you that the next power tool purchase we make will be something that can saw through half-inch-thick plastic with speed, precision, and operator-ease.
On to the fun part: the pictures of the process. My barrels have a few quirks that lead to much of my above-mentioned frustration--the biggest of which is that they do not have removable lids, which means that I wouldn't be able to secure the spigot from the inside as well as out, as Sharon had taught me (one of her anti-leak tricks that I was determined to recreate). So, instead, I had to figure out how to carve away enough of the lid to allow me access to the interior base of the barrel:
I cut away most of the top so that I would have enough room to get half inside the thing, and trust me it is good that this photo isn't any closer or you would see the gory outcome of the combined use of the drill, dremel tool, hand saw, circular saw, and box-cutter that Jason & I took turns wielding on that ridiculous lid. Once this was accomplished, however, the rest was easy.
So, next up, is the required hardware and equipment:
The caulk was ours from an earlier toilet-leak project, but the hardware all came from Lowe's. From left to right, they are: -a 3/4" brass hose bibb (apparently the technical term for a spigot--see I'm learning things!)
-a 3/4" plastic female converter with a washer included (this is screwed on the hose bibb from the inside to keep everything tight)
[Sorry, I need to vent for a moment here: does anyone else other than my mother & I hate that plumbers & electricians once upon a time decided to use gender labels to identify these things? I understand why, it just annoys me. Why not compare them to belly buttons instead and call them in-eys and out-eys--the same logic applies without the good ol' boy sexual innuendo.... And, Dad, quit rolling your eyes. You think I'm reading too much into this, I know, I know.]
-um, if you are still with me, the next piece in the picture is the mysterious 5/8" Flare x MIP Half Union (doesn't matter what that means, really--this forms the overflow opening at the top of the barrel, and getting the 5/8" size means that you can attach a garden hose to it to redirect any excess rainwater.)
-and, lastly, you will need to drill holes in the barrel 1/4" larger than the hardware you've purchased, so for the spigot, you need a 1" drill bit, and for the overflow you actually need 3/4" bit (the 5/8" measurement is for the larger end, and it is the smaller 1/2" end that you are going to mount in the barrel.)
So, time to start drilling:
The hose bibb/spigot does sort of screw in, but to make sure you have a leak-proof fit, the female (grrr) converter should be screwed on to the spigot from the inside:
And now, time to caulk. I think being thorough is best, so I sealed this piece on the inside and out.
One more hole to drill, and we are done with power tools: this one goes roughly 6" from the top of the barrel, as the overflow opening. I put mine closer to the back of the barrel rather than on the side, to hide it a little.
And now we're in the home stretch. Time to deal with screening the top of the barrel so that mosquitoes can't start a baby factory in my precious rainwater, and to keep all of the leaves, twig, seeds, berries, and other roof shrapnel out of the water as well. Ramona is a big help, of course.
In the last two pictures, you can see that there is a plastic ring holding the screen in place--this is actually the former top edge of the barrel that I carved off, intact, for just this purpose. It flared out, wider than the rest of the top of the barrel, so I knew that I could fit the flared edge back down over the screen. If your barrel has a removable lid, this won't be something you need to worry about--you can just stretch the screen across your open barrel and then fasten the lid over it to keep it in place. Drill some holes in your lid, and voila! you are in business.
Since the plastic ring that I cut from the barrel wasn't a tight enough fit to keep the screen taut, I cut off the excess screen and used black duct tape to both secure the screen and create a finished look.
And, the rain barrel is finished!
Just a few more things, and we are ready for a good rainstorm! But, first, you need to figure out how to configure the downspout that you want to drain into your barrel, and you also must fashion some sort of platform for the barrel. Since the height of your platform dictates the final height of the barrel, and therefore, the changes you will need to make to the downspout, I would start by determining how high you want your barrel to sit.
The easiest solution is to just keep your barrel on the ground, and that is certainly an option. However, you should remember that the only thing that gives the water coming out of your barrel any momentum or force is our familiar old friend Gravity. The higher your barrel, the more water pressure you will have coming out of a hose attached to your spigot. If you are going to be filling a watering can from the rain barrel, you need room to get the can under the spigot to catch the water, but you don't want to position the spigot too high on the side of the barrel and be unable to access half of the water you've collected.
A cheap and very common solution is to use concrete blocks as a platform. This allows watering can-access and gives you a little extra water pressure. However, since I happened to have a bunch of free 1"- and 2" x 4" 's in my woodpile, I decided to make a little table for my barrel, and make it just under two feet tall.
For the downspout, I decided that it would be easiest to get a flexible extender, rather than permanently cutting the downspout to fit. If we ever want to go back to the regular configuration, I have an intact downspout to use. The extender is also from Lowe's and compresses to around two feet, and expands to a little over four feet--perfect for our situation. Many thanks to Jason for his help with getting this last piece of the puzzle into place.
And, DONE!
So satisfying. The barrel cost me $10 from a woman on Craigslist, the hardware was between $15-20, and some of it, like the drill bits and roll of screen will be useful for many more barrels. The best part, however, is that in the 36 hours that we've had the barrel in use, we have almost FILLED it--that is probably 50 gallons of water that would otherwise have continued to make an enormous mud puddle next to our patio. Time to make the next one to collect the overflow!
No comments:
Post a Comment