Rob Thompson

Here is some information about my two 330 rain barrels. This might help you if you are interested in saving some money on your water bill and keeping a fair amount of the rainfall over your property off the watershed and from becoming just wasted runoff.

A lot of sites out there sell those 50 gallon drums for rain collections. I don’t recommend them. Regardless of the size house you have, you will easily overflow one of those things with a sprinkle of rain. I’ve even found this 330 gallon barrel to be too small, so I have installed 2, one in the front of the house and one in the back for a total of 660 gallons of rain collection.

Adding some fair size rain barrels/containers to your property is surprisingly easy and cheap. The first thing you need to do is to buy a few of the rain barrels off eBay. Search for liquid tote or tote container or the like. These containers are normally used for shipping large amounts of oils/liquids on trucks/trains. Many sellers will let you pay a little extra to have them cleaned out. Otherwise, just do your best with a hose and everything will be ok.

You can expect to pay between $70 and $120 a piece on eBay if you look around. You’re going to pay a premium for shipping as they will be delivered via truck, but that’s just the way it is.

First, find a place near your existing downspout and drain to place the barrel. Then, setup and level a pad of cinder blocks on the soil around where you want to lay the tote. Make sure that the soil is compact and level. Then, place the tote on top of the cinder blocks when it arrives.

Next, you are going to need to intercept your regular downspout with some PVC. This will likely involve getting some PVC elbows and some lengths of 4″ and 2″ pipe. Here is how I connected mine.

I simply put an elbow on the top part to angle some 4″ PVC toward the tote, then, on the overflow return, jammed some 2″ PVC down the existing aluminum hookup to the gutter drain.

The most complicated part is setting up the connector on the top of the tote so that when you get a big downpour that overflows tote, extra water will flow back into your sewer system. I’m not going to bore you with a 1000 words about this, as a picture is worth more than 1000 words. So here it is.

The key here is to cut a hole in the plastic cap that comes with your tote and glue/attach a 4″ PVC connector to it. Then, get one of the screw-in 2″ PVC connectors, drill out a 2″ hole in the side and connect the 2″ PVC in the side of the 4″ PVC. Then, get some aluminum flashing, adjustable strap some window screen and attach as shown. When the water overflows, it goes down the 2″ pipe to the sewer.

Some notes to remember about the whole thing.. First, the barrel will weigh more than 1 ton, or about 2700 pounds when full. If you don’t compact your soil before placing the cinder blocks, the barrel will list to one side or the other when weighed down. Next, don’t seal all of your PVC joints until the very end. You can probably even get away not sealing them at all. Also, you will likely need a few connectors from your hardware stores to connect the large pipe at the base of the tote to your garden hose. Use plenty of caulk/silicon on the joints.

Well, that’s it, and good luck!