Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there!

I know the worms in the worm composting bin are going to eat well for a while with all these kitchen scraps today :)

Our rain barrel works and is now over half full with rain water!!!

Two days after hooking up the rain barrel we received a storm. This storm wasn't much, however it did fill up our rain barrel over half way! I will do another video showing the rain barrel and how I built it and why.

Building rain barrels - Adding the hose spigot / hose bib

Had a few free minutes today so I decided to drill the hole for the hose spigot. I'll get you the exact size of the spigot I used later. Right now all I remember is that I used a 1" hole saw to make my cut out, and used teflon tape around the threads before threading the hose bib all the way into the rain barrel.

Of course when I saw a blue hose spigot you know I had to use those! It really looks good with this style hose bib. I have angled the hose bib slightly on an upward angle. This should allow me to keep the barrel on level ground,(without using any stands), and still connect a piece of hose to this hose bib without leaving that much empty space inside the bottom of my rain barrel. My plan is to not use any type of stand or base under my rain barrel and see if I can still get a hose connected without much headache. The rain barrels on stands or some type of base scare me as far as them falling over for whatever reason. If I angle my water spigot just enough, like in the photo, I think I can have my rain barrel sit on the flat dirt and still not loose much water that would settle below the spigot inside the barrel. This would also help me keep the rain barrel from standing to tall in which it will be more obvious. I'm trying to make my rain barrel very incognito and blend into the landscape :)

I also used a small amount of aquarium silicone around the hose bib in addition to the teflon tape around the threads for a water tight seal.

How to make rain barrels using food grade 55 gallon barrels

So I decided adding a few rain barrels would be a great way to reduce our use of water we have to pay for. I'll be doing this process from start to finish all the while adding pictures of the progress along with posts on idea's and such.

I am very excited to start this rain barrel project and anxious to see how much water we can collect from our Arizona rain storms.

Here is an image of my rain barrels. So far I have two, but I plan on adding a few more  in the near future. My rain barrels are food grade, 55 gallon blue plastic barrels with removable lids that secure to the top of the barrel with a metal clamp.

REMEBER:
- Always use a FOOD GRADE barrel so that you do not contaminate your rain water with chemicals that were once inside the plastic barrel.

- Removable lids are a MUST in order to clean your rain barrel properly.

I look forward to posting more progress soon. You might have rain gutters installed on your residence, I however do not. After I find the perfect place to put the rain barrel, I will have to install rain gutters on the roof. This should not be very hard, although I've never installed rain gutters before. Time consuming at the least is all.