Rain Barrels

[helwen]

New England Rain Barrel

Sadly, they don't seem to have any pickup towns in western MA this year. But they do seem to have quite a few places in central and eastern MA. If you order a rainbarrel or two and arrange to pick it up through one of the towns they're working with, the rain barrels are only $72.95 each. They also sell some useful hardware, for if you're say, hooking two of them up together, quite reasonably.

Last year Greenfield was one of the towns and so we ordered two and picked them up on the appointed day. They were 60-something each last year but of course everything's gotten more expensive. Still, they're made from recycled plastic, are of food-grade quality materials, and work very well.

Could be a useful thing to have, especially if we have a dry summer (quite possible, given the weather we had this past weekend).

The company has arrangements with some towns in some neighboring states, so worth checking it out if you're interested. You can also order from them and pick it up at their main place, but it costs more for some reason (not a group order I guess). $119.95 I think -- which, if you do some searching online, is still not horrible, but.... Oh, and don't even think about having one shipped -- I did some research last year at a few companies and it doubles the price of the item, at least.

We'll be putting ours out, hopefully this week.

Comments

[loosecanon.livejournal.com]

I've slowly been building mine, using a barrel formerly filled with sand.
I drilled the cap for the hardware, and flipped it "upside down", so I don't need large holes to tap it.
It's been painted green, and will have an overlay of tan, to help it blend in visually.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Excellent! We made our first one -- former pickle barrel from Freecycle, plus hardware we bought. We left it in Holyoke as part of bargaining with the buyers.

I would suggest some sort of screening for the incoming water, to keep out leaves, sand, etc.

[gigglingwizard.livejournal.com]

You know, these are really easy to make. If there's a soda bottler in your area or some other kind of processed food manufacturer, you may be able to get a barrel for anywhere from free to about $10. Another ten or fifteen bucks in hardware and an hour of your time, and you've got a completed rain barrel.

I also noticed that the ones on the site you linked to have the spigot really high. All the water below that will just be stagnant and inaccessible. I've heard of people putting the spigot a couple inches up from the bottom so that sediment can settle to the bottom (and because it's easier than installing it on the bottom). Any idea why these ones are so much higher?

[helwen.livejournal.com]

We've made one before, hardware plus Freecycle for the barrel. I wanted to encourage a local business and to encourage people who are not handy, but would like to get into rainwater catchment :)

These barrels have two spigots, one low and one high. The high one is for overflow, so it doesn't come back out the hole at the top.

We have two barrels. The first one catches the water and we've attached a hose from the low spigot on it over to the second barrel. The second barrel has a Y-join on it, so one is for the overflow hose and one is for where we actually get water out of the barrels. And we have a hose on the high spigot of the second barrel for overflow for both barrels -- useful for directing water away from the house.

While ideally one would have a way to direct overflow into yet another barrel, it's a reasonable compromise. Of course if I lived in Arizona or some other place down south, you can bet I'd have another container (or larger system in toto), for catching all the water I could.

So far though, this system seems to be working. But we'll see what this summer brings. Last year was pretty wet, but we're thinking this might be a drier year. If it trends that way, we'll have to see about increasing water catchment so that we don't strain the spring's capacity.