A Little Rain Barrel DIY

As you might recall, last fall friends helped us put up a cute little greenhouse with cute little gutters and cute little down-spouts... and ever since then I've wanted to complete the picture with cute little rain barrels. But there were a couple of issues: 1. Rain barrels can be a bit expensive and B. there really weren't any smaller-sized rain barrels made for snap-together greenhouse gutters.

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That didn't stop me from a plethora of futile online searches, where I found everything from "designer" barrels that fit the "cute" bill, but not the budget, to "upcycled" food-grade barrels that you'd expect to be cheaper (but weren't), to industrial burn-style barrels that, while cool looking, were a bit overkill for my needs.

Some examples:

And then there were the prices, ranging from $90-$350 per barrel—I kid you not. $350. per barrel.

Even at slightly cheaper than $90 (per barrel), it was still too much for my wallet. Especially considering I needed 4.

Plus, at 50+ gallons, they were a bit too big for my greenhouse. The only thing that came close to my price point was a collapsable rain barrel that wasn't known to hold up over the years like, say, an *actual* barrel.

So, I opted for making my own. I scoured Craigslist and the freecycle pages—but no one had anything smaller than a 50 gallon barrel. And, while they were somewhat cheaper than the $90 a pop barrels, once you bought the converter kit, spigot, and hosing—you might as well order the ready-made version online. Apparently gone are the days when people would give you barrels for free or only charge $10-$15 a pop for them.

I turned back to Amazon, this time looking for 20 gallon haz-mat barrels. Yep, you heard me. Haz-mat. Fun fact: just because something is listed as haz-mat, doesn't mean it's not made of food grade plastic. And LOW, I found this little charmer:

Okay, so it's not quite 20 gallons, but It cost me $28.74 (per barrel) and is much closer to the size I'd envisioned for the greenhouse.

Once I had these puppies, I just had to go to the hardware store for a few more materials:

• A hose bibb (aka spigot, or if you're in the south: "spicket")
• An irrigation elbow (found near Pex / irrigation / plumbing stuff)
• An irrigation adaptor (also found near Pex / irrigation / plumbing stuff)
• Some 1/2 inch polyvinyl hosing to connect my gutters to the rain barrels (fyi: my gutter "down spout" is 1/2 inch)

I already had the 1" and 3/4" drill bits (from that time I went to that estate sale and bought loads of tools—yeah, that was cool).

1. I marked a spot about 1" from the bottom of the barrel, and drilled a 1" hole to thread the hose bibb (spigot) into. 
2. At the top of the barrel (on one of the sides), I drilled a 3/4" hole to thread the irrigation elbow into—this became the overflow & allows me to connect the 1/2" hose to it if I want to daisy chain it to another barrel.
3. I drilled a 3/4" hole on the lid and threaded the irrigation male adaptor into it. This connects the 1/2" hose to the down spout

From there, I leveled the ground underneath the down spout and stacked some leftover pavers onto which I placed the rain barrels.

We just had 2 days of rain, and if I hadn't accidentally left all of the spigots opened, I'd have at least a good 30 gallons of water collected already.

Cost breakdown:

• 14 gallon barrel (from Amazon): $28.74 each
• Hose spigot (from Lowe's): $5.08 each
• connector (from Lowe's): $0.61 each
• water outlet valve (from Lowe's): $0.16 each

Final cost per 14 gallon rain barrel: $34.59 each (plus tax).

Granted, if you're looking at the total number of gallons the barrels can hold, it's not actually cheaper than one 55 gallon rain barrel, but for my needs, this fit the bill and was more practical.

PLUS, if you can find cheaper food-grade barrels, your conversion cost is really only the price of the hose bibb, the water inlet & outlet connectors ($5-$10). If connecting to actual down spouts / gutters, you'll incur the cost of a diverter kit (about $35)—but you'd have to shell out that money no matter what, since most rain barrels don't come with diverter kits.

My next water saving challenge will be creating diversion swales in my landscape to direct rain water to areas I've planted. I just bought this book from Amazon (link below), because I watched Brad Lancaster's Ted Talk:

Rainwater Harvesting by Brad Lancaster (not an affiliate link, btw)

My goal for the Summer is to not have my water bill go up drastically. Most months it averages around $26-$31. In the Summer, though, when I'm watering stuff a lot, it can jump up to $80-$100 (yowza).

I'll let you know how it goes.


[Update: October 2018]—my water bill over the summer didn't exceed $36, thanks to the rain barrels and some rainier than normal weather.