Let's Talk About Rain!

We got the remnants of the Tropical Storm on Sunday. It was a well needed full day of steady and sometimes heavy rains. Our big garden needed it so badly. One of the yucky things about having rented this piece of land for our garden is that we don't have water access to the plants. We truly have to rely on the heavens to open up and grant us water for our plants. We did try to water the garden once. We filled up 2 55 gallon trashcans in the back of the pick up truck at our house and drove over to the garden, literally 3 minutes away and less than a mile. When we got there our son hopped in the back of the truck bed and held a hose in the trashcan and I walked along behind the truck as my husband drove the truck through the garden and controlled the hose. It worked, sort of. We got the water to the plants but in the process my legs and shoes became wet and muddy, my son got soaked every time the truck hit ruts in the ground and my husband ran over a bunch of plants with the truck. We abandoned the idea and started praying for some consistent weekly rains.

We had been reading about rain barrels and thought it would be "fun" to try to make one. My husband found a heavy duty plastic barrel at a local middle school. It was used to hold a floor stripper, mainly made of ammonia. The custodian gave him the empty barrel and we cleaned it out and installed a spigot in the bottom of it on the side. We also drilled a couple of holes on the sides very close to the top for overflow. We hooked it up to one of our rain spouts and placed it in our garden next to the house. Within an hour it was full of rain water and the water was pouring out of the overflow holes. It rained all day. By afternoon my husband was a bit frustrated that we had no other way to capture this rainwater that we were "allowing" to pour out of the overflow holes. Poor guy. His idea worked and worked well but we had so much rain that he wanted to capture it all. He is now talking about an underground storage system. Come on now, we don't live in the desert! We get rain fairly regularly. AND we have county water coming to the house that we pay for. Just how much water do we need? Unfortunately, we need it not here but at our big garden. If only there was some way we could get it there.

I did a bit of research on the rain barrels and they range in price from $70-200. You can get them on wheels and with the attachments already installed like spigots, hoses, etc. So here is my thought. Why pay that much money when you can make one for so much less? If we didn't have the gift of the ammonia barrel we would have probably used a 55 or 70 gallon trashcan. If you want one with wheels you can buy a trashcan on wheels. A metal spigot and some pipe tape for adhesive worked well for us. Just drill a hole on the side near the bottom and then screw in the spigot. Next cut a hole for the rain spout in the top and place near your rain spout and use a flexible spout and attach. You would have to seal the trashcan lid with an epoxy. Many people use a screen in the spout to filter out the trash(leaves and stuff). We put the screen at the top of our gutter. The only other thing you need is a piece of hose to hook to the spigot. We are putting in a bit of bleach in our water to keep the mosquitoes away.

The picture is very similar to our barrel. The hose at the top is the overflow hose which would be connected to another barrel to store the overflow water. We will be adding this hose when we get another barrel. Many industries use barrels for large quantities of cleaning supplies and other liquids. You may be able to scavenge one or two of them for your use.

How cool is that!! Oh, for those who live in a very arid climate, think about your AC unit condensation pipe. A few years ago we had a drought here and were asked to conserve water and not to water our flowers, gardens and shrubs. We placed a Rubbermaid 55 gallon trashcan underneath our condensation pipe and collected the water that dripped from it. We filled the trashcan in just a couple of days!! We dipped our watering can in the collected water and watered our shrubs, washed our car, and kept all our flowers and veggie garden going all through the drought. Now we have a birdbath placed under the drip and there is fresh cool water all the time for the birds. They love it!