I’m in Chicago. Maybe most major cities offer this, no idea!
The Midwest tries to be greener than the majority of the country. I’ve also never heard of a city offering this. But it costs very little to make a simple rain collection barrel. If you have existing gutters you’ve kept clean.
Step 1: Choose your location
For a rain barrel to work properly, it should be set up near the corner of your house where your drain pipe runs down from your gutters.
You’ll need to route your drain pipe into your rain barrel to filter the water into it from your gutter catchment system, so choose a corner of your house where there’s a drain pipe to set your rain barrel up.
Step 2: Make a stand for your rain barrel to sit on
While you could technically just put your rain barrel right on the ground, keeping it a couple feet up off the ground gives you the ability to add a spigot (tap) and have enough room to fit a watering can or bucket beneath it and allow the water to pour into it, so I recommend making or using a stand underneath your rain barrel.
Ryan built a two-foot tall stand out of scrap wood to prop our rain barrel up on because that’s what we had on hand, but you could use cinderblocks or bricks or really anything that is strong enough to hold the weight of your barrel when it’s full of water (at least 250 to 300 pounds on average for a standard size garbage can), and level so that the barrel sits flat and doesn’t tip or wobble.
Step 3: Route your drain pipe into the bin
Once you’ve set your stand up and put the garbage can on top of it, you’ll need to cut a hole in the lid and route the drain pipe from your gutter into the bin.
Ryan used a couple elbows to divert our drain pipe to where we wanted it to be, but you could also use a flexible drain pipe that you can bend and shape to where you want it to go.
Trace around the drain pipe on top of the lid and then cut the hole out with a utility knife. Do a test run to make sure the drain pipe fits in the hole, but keep the lid off until after step 5 as you’ll be adding a debris screen before the lid goes on.
Step 4: Add spigots
You’ll want a tap on your rain barrel for ease of use, as well as a tap to allow any excess water to flow out instead of having your barrel overflow from the top. Again, we had a couple spigots on hand for these purposes, but you can buy them at any hardware store or get them online here.
Cut a hole in the bottom of the barrel where the spigot will go. A ¾ inch hole should do for most standard spigots. Pop the spigot in the hole and then seal around the edge with silicone, pipe dough or rubber washers.
Drill another hole on the side of the barrel near the top and attach another spigot or a pipe for the overflow drain. (If using a spigot for the overflow, you’ll want to leave the tap open).
Attach a hose and route the hose to the original drain (or wherever you want any overflow water to go). This will help direct overflow water to where you want it to go and prevent water from spilling over the sides of the garbage can once it’s full.
Step 5: Add a debris screen
You’ll also want to add a screen to your rain barrel to prevent any leaves and debris from your gutter from entering your rain barrel, as well as to keep bugs out. This is especially important for bugs like mosquitoes that lay their eggs and hatch their larvae in still water. Even though you probably won’t be filtering and drinking this water, you certainly don’t want to be attracting a bunch of mosquitoes into your space!
Ryan cut the mesh out of an old window screen we had laying around. Of course, if you don’t live in a scarp yard like us, you can buy some window screen material and use that.
Courtesy of the house and homestead. Changed hyperlinks to not have their reference. Since they are Amazon links. Now not referenced to another site
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Well I’m out
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Thank you for the info and ideas, does anyone know if rain water is considered pure water?
Yeah I’ve seen that it is depending on how it is collected (if it’s coming from gutters that are not cleaned up obviously it might have roof stuff in it)
But you still should ph it
I know I’m a little late to the party but this statement couldn’t be more true.
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Check the PPM on your RO system once you replace filters and flush the new filters. Home system should be 1-10 PPM. Check it each month and you will slowly see PPM go up over time. This has been my experience. My RO is 3 PPM after new filters, 2 years later it is 23 and 23 is still good when my city water is between 500 & 600 ppm. The reason the flow slows down is probably because the air in your water reservoir is too low. Tank pressure should be around 10lbs. You can check it with a quality tire gauge. If it is too low just check YouTube there are plenty of vids on repressurizing the tank. I have to do mine once every 30-45 days if I am using lots of RO.
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