Texas Rain Barrels

Sorry about the aspect ratio. This was taken on my iPhone....
Materials:
- 2x 55 gal. food grade storage barrels, rinsed (craigslist, $10 each)
- 4 fence poles (cemented in ground), random wood for platform
- PVC (grown-man legos)
- pipe tape
- silicon

This is my engineering exercise in rain barrel system construction. I started with the PVC diverter assembly (the big white thing) which has a trap and 2 diverters (working from bottom to top) The basic flow goes:

1) it starts to rain and fills up the trap at the bottom. This is less than 1/4 gallon of storage, and is purely used to trap heavy debris and obviously prevent it from flowing into the barrels. It can be unscrewed with a crescent wrench and emptied as needed. I do have one of those wire contraptions (found at HD near the rain gutters) at the top of the rain gutter to prevent leaves and other debris (that would float) from entering the downspout/assembly/barrels.

2) once the trap is full and the water level rises, it hits the first diverter and spills into the barrels. Note that with the manifold (the PVC pipe at underneath connecting the barrels) these barrels are in parallel, not in sequence..meaning that they fill up together, not one after another. The clear plastic tube used for a water level indicator is also filled up simultaneously.

3) when the barrels are full, the water level rises back in the diverter assembly up to the second diverter. The rain water is then routed around the trap part of the assembly and into the original rain gutter underneath.

Every PVC joint must be COMPLETELY sealed with silicon. As a result of the construction, my barrels will only fill up to the point where the PVC is attached to the barrels, so I sacrifice probably 10-15 gallons of water, but I determined through much research that the rain diverters sold in the store ($30-50) aren't worth much more than one season and leak like crazy. So, I decided to just make my own.

How quickly do they fill up? Mileage will vary depending on where you decide to put your barrel, but I put mine on a gutter that probably serves 1/5 of my roof, and these barrels will fill up completely with about a 3/4" rain.

As I said before, everything must be completely sealed. Do not use too much PVC cement (too much will deteriorate the pipe), but you cannot use enough silicon. It may take you several times to get it all sealed up properly, but you'll get it. You can see at the bottom I added some shut off valves in case I need to seal off one barrel and perform maintenance on it without losing all the rainwater.

One thing not pictured - you need to drill holes in the top of the second barrel to let the air vent out so that it will fill up. The first barrel has a hole in the top in order to attach the pipe/silicon the inside. Similarly, the pvc cap on the top of the clear plastic tubing that I'm using for a level is not sealed, just pressed on and I drilled a hole in the top of the cap for ventilation so the level would also fill up.

The stand I built is about 2' off the ground from the bottom and the water flows out pretty fast, plus it's all easy to work on being that high... but this part isn't vital to the construction at all.

I added a mosquito dunk in the top since it's not sealed just to keep them out and I haven't seen a single mosquito back there (and it's currently July).

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Rain Barrels
• rainwater harvesting

[fletcher3913]

I relate PVC pipe to Tinker Toys but I'm probably older that you. Really like the paintings on the barrels! I haven't seen that done before... creative.