rain barrel
ne of the things planned for the new front porch was a place to put a rain barrel. Given the weather patterns here in California (rainy winters, dry summers), there's a limit to the usefulness of a barrel as it won't get refilled from roughly May to October, but every little bit helps. Today I cut the downspout and added an elbow to get it ready.
Eventually I'd like to have a big tank under the deck that gets fed from multiple downspouts, but for now I'll have to settle for this 50 gallon one. It should get its first test Saturday night, and the overflow system some time after that as the forecast has rain on and off all next week.
9 comments:
So far, so good. The rain barrel has started filling, and has at least enough water in it to reach the spigot on the side.
The first storm filled it. There are several more storms lined up over the Pacific headed our way, so the overflow system will get a test, too.
Nice! You're ahead of us---ours have had all their holes drilled but faucets and overflow lines not yet installed....oy! We didn't go look during yesterday's rain, but I have to imagine they were little fountains. :)
I seem to recall you've got a drain below them, in front of the door. If so, you should be OK. Me, I had to add a drain :-)
Great to hear that things are going well with your new rain barrel.
It is amazing how fast they fill up. Mine is 500 L (132 gal) and a good stead rain can fill it up quickly. So making sure that the overflow has somewhere to go is critical.
Lastly, it is also amazing how quickly dirt and other organic debris can clog up the filtering system (at least here in the Midwest). There is no substitute for very regular maintenance. The overflow rarely works when the filter is really clogged and this can mean a lot of water dropping right by the foundation...never a good thing.
This one has holes in the lid, and a mesh below that, so most of the crud stays out of the barrel itself. But I discovered after a couple of storms that the holes were clogging with small bits of organic stuff washed down from the roof. That lead to not all the overflow making it into the barrel (and hence into the overflow pipe), so we ended up with some water by the foundation :-( I'll need to keep an eye on it. Fortunately it's near the front door so I can easily check it regularly.
Cool blog. I have a similar blog.... you need to add RSS feed or follower gadget so we can follow it.
Please send me the RSS feed, I'd like to follow your blog.
I added a link to the RSS feed and to the 'follow' thing for blogs. It's odd because in Firefox there's a "Follow" link at the top, but the one that appears in Internet Explorer doesn't show the link for that, just "Share", "Next Blog", etc.
I just found out the local renovaton/donation place has barrels for super cheap. Hoping to pick one up next weekend!
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