Home » Plants & Animals » Organic Gardening » How to Make a Rain Barrel and Conserve Water in the Garden

How to Make a Rain Barrel and Conserve Water in the Garden

© Deborah Turton

Having a rain barrel in your garden can reduce the amount of well water or municipal water you use. It is a great way to conserve resources. Just don't use the water for anything but your garden.

Setting Up an Easy Rain Barrel

You can alwyas buy barrels and divert your gutter water to fill them, but to get more storage for less money, you can make your own system. You can buy usable barrels at a variety of places. Old whiskey barrels or reconditioned food grade plastic barrels are also fine. If you can get larger ones, you won't have to connect them together. Look in the yellow pages under "containers or barrels - used."

The simplest design is to divert your gutter down spout into a barrel. Various catalog and garden stores sell these. You can then dip a bucket into your barrel to use the water. This system has some drawbacks. Chiefly, mosquitoes are likely to be a problem. You can use a screen over the barrel, spray the water with oil, or use Bt to help control them, but it will be an ongoing inconvenience. Also, open barrels are a safety hazard for children.

Assembling a Rain Barrel with Spigot

To assemble your own system, remove the gutter going down the side of the house, and replace it with a PVC elbow. Attach piping from the elbow over a large funnel (like a car oil funnel from an auto store), so you won't have to be as careful lining everything up. Wrap screening over the top of the funnel and tie to keep out insects and debris.

For the piping, you can use PVC pipes and various elbows and Ts. Placed the barrels first on the cinder blocks and measure how long the pipes have to be. At the end of the PVC pipes, after the spigot, attach a flexible plastic tube to easily fill a watering can or garden cart.

Remember the end of the tubing always has to be lower than the top of the water. If your barrels aren't raised slightly, the last foot or so of water won't drain from your barrels. Try mounding dirt under the pipes to support them. If you don't, the weight of the water could break the seal between the pipes and the barrels.

This will give you space to run the pipes under the barrels. The barrels must have holes in the bottom or side to run a PVC pipe through. Connect a spigot to the pipe. Trying to attach a spigot to a sealed barrel is not easy. If you have trouble, drill tiny (about 1/64") holes in the sides just at the top to let in air so there would be enough air pressure to push the water out.

The copyright of the article How to Make a Rain Barrel and Conserve Water in the Garden in Organic Gardening is owned by Deborah Turton. Permission to republish How to Make a Rain Barrel and Conserve Water in the Garden in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.