My Rain Barrels

I use eight rain barrels to collect water for use in watering outdoor plants, our garden and refilling two birdbaths. In the winter, I empty the barrels, and rain water is drained out into the yard. This system conserves tap water and saves energy that would be spent purifying and transporting drinking-quality water just to pour on ornamental plants! These barrels were originally used to ship olives to the US from Spain, so using them as rain barrels means they do not need to be thrown away or recycled.

Photos of my barrels for the impatient

Note that I have connected them in such a way that I can fill all of them via one barrel, and drain all of them from one hose outlet. I do not have to switch hoses around each time I empty a barrel.

arrangement of just one barrel
three barrels linked together (180 gallons capacity)
five barrels linked together (300 gallons worth)
plumbing on the outlet barrel of a set. See plumbing section for the necessary hardware
plumbing on a middle barrel of a set
plumbing on the end barrel of a set

More Information:
The Problems - Too Much and Too Little Water:
The Solution:
I bought two sixty gallon plastic rain barrels from Real Goods (and then six more from the actual manufacturer, the Great American Rain Barrel Company) and placed them on the side of the house, one set next to each of the two main rain gutter downspouts. I describe my complete solution below, but you do NOT have to go to the same extent as I did to make good use of the barrels.

Each barrel has a removable lid, two overflow drainage holes, built-in handles, and a faucet spigot with on/off lever. As you can see from my photos, I connected my barrels with metal fittings and garden hose.

Getting Water IN:

Getting Water OUT:
It is very handy that my house is on a gentle slope. So gravity helps me get water out of the rain barrels and down to the plants I want to water.
Plumbing Details:
 These particular barrels come with several holes drilled and threaded for you. There are two one-half inch (0.50") holes where one can place the spigot; one half-way up the barrel and one just above the bottom. There are two three-quarters inch (0.75") diameter holes near the top of the barrel for overflow connections. One key piece of knowledge I can pass along to you is that the holes use pipe threads. The threads on metal pipes are different from those on garden hoses! (Hose thread is more course.) Keep this in mind as you try to connect things together!

I wanted all of my barrels to act as one large container -- I did not want to have to move my hose from one barrel to the other to drain them, nor did I want to have to manually direct incoming rain. One can easily solve the latter problem by using the overflow connections at the top of the barrel to link barrels together. However, you have to go to the bottom of the barrel to remove water. They key to my arrangement was realizing that water could use the same connection pipe to both fill and drain. Instead of filling up one barrel at a time, then overflowing into the next barrel in line, my scheme results in all of the barrels filling and draining at the same rate.

I chose to use metal fittings for durability and maximum water flow. The plastic spigots provided with the barrels had only about a 0.25" hole for water to flow through. I know this because the plastic spigot was made in two parts, one of which will detach from the other if you pull on a hose too hard. When they come apart you can see how small the hole is. Lastly, the plastic spigot only had an on/off setting -- so you couldn't vary the amount of water flow. Of course, you could do that downstream with another fitting, but the two previous reasons were good enough to me to switch.

Each barrel has its own valve so I can keep water in or out while I work on other parts of the system. I used pipe thread tape to try to reduce leaks. You definitely need pipe clamps to prevent leaks if you use old garden hose to connect barrels together. I chose not to try to use metal or PVC piping between barrels because I didn't want to have to cut pipes to just the right length for the distance between every two specific barrels. Garden hose is flexible. And cheap. And easy to replace if, say, an early freeze catches me with water in the pipes (although I have to say that I've had 1/2 to 3/4 full barrels freeze on me during short cold spells without any problems!!!) I used standard 5/8" diameter garden hose.

All of the barrels have the same initial components. Going from the barrel outwards, the parts are:

End barrel plumbing hardware (click for photo)
The first barrel in a set has the simplest plumbing. It is comprised of Middle barrel plumbing hardware (click for photo)
The middle barrels in a set have the following plumbing. Going from the barrel outwards, the parts are: Outlet barrel plumbing hardware (click for photo)
This is the most complicated fixture. It includes:
Jeffrey Tunison