Rain water harvesting in 5 gallon buckets

Here is some fun we had a few weeks back with some  extra 5 gallon buckets we had in the garden. I stuck a 5 gallon bucket under the newly installed rain gutter in the front yard about every 10 minutes. I was able to quickly fill the six buckets with rain water. This was just for fun, although it does make me want more 55 gallon drums for real rain water harvesting!

The rain from Cali is here

Looks like the rain is here tonight. It started raing hard a few hours back, but is now it is calm. I recently sold my two rain barrel set up and am now wishing I had more :) All is not lost, however, I was able to collect six 5 gallon buckets full of rain water! I have installed another section of rain gutter and was able to use the down spout from that section of gutter to fill the buckets.

Pictures of the rain in our rain barrels from the last storm

I shot a video of the small storm that hit us a while back, however, it was a little dark and hard to see all the rain in the rain barrel. Here a a few photos of the rain we were able to capture:

 This image shows the brown flex tube, (that is connected to the gutter downspout), connected and clamped to our green 4" atrium gate, which fits in the 4" opening on the top of our rain barrel lid. Since this picture was taken I have added pantyhose to cover the atrium gate so mosquitoes cannnot get inside to the water. More panty hose will cover the over flow holes as  well.

 Look at all that water in the rain barrel!!! I was able to get these pictures while there was a break in the storm. Later in the day it started to rain again, which added even more water into our newly made rain barrel. Currently it's just over half full of rain water! I can't wait to build the other rain barrels for more winter storms here in Arizona.

If you have any questions about rain barrels please ask and I'll do my best to help you out :)

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.

Rain barrel is now filled half way with rain water!!!

So the rain came as advertised  yesterday and it filled up our new rain barrel over half way!

I will post some video along with images soon. It's so cool to have this rain barrel working after all the work we've done. Hanging the gutters was definatly worth it. Now I just need more rain barrels, lol

Rain barrel update: Finished phase one of three

Rain barrel update:

I have finished installation of the rain gutter in location number one out of our three total locations. The gutter is hung, the down spout has been installed and the rain barrels have been placed in the proper location. I have my flexible hose attached to the gutter down spout and connected to the atrium gate which is installed upside down on top of the rain barrel  lid. I have taken some  pictures, but need to download them from my camera later to post here.

We may get some rain today as a matter of fact. Local reports are calling for later in the evening rain which will give my new rain gutters a good test run for larger storms in the future. I am excited to see the results of our rain collection device.

I will post the images soon as well as a detailed list of what is needed to accomplish what I have done here. It's really very simple and should be very rewarding!