How to Build a Rain Barrel

Not to get on a soap box, But less that 1% of the earths water is fresh drinkable water. Dispite this fact, and with our cheap water in America, we use water a lot. Water is projected to go up this year and I want to keep cost down. I am also trying to move to our household to a place of sustainability so I decided to start rainwater harvesting. This is just a classy term for using the water from rain, for the things I need around the house.

The first and easiest step in this process is making a rain barrel. It’s a contained that is usually connected to you gutters, that will store water to be used in the garden. The average roof can collect 15,000 gallons of water a year! Here’s how I did mine.

There are a lot of different ways to do it. I just used a plastic trash can. A nice lady at home dept helped me with the attachments, one of them was free because she said they had it, but they don’t sell it. You also need some way to filter the water to remove leaves and junk (this also help keep mosquitoes out of you barrel! I used an old screen to wrap around where the gutter connects to the rain barrel

1. Get your gutter about 6-8 feet off the ground

2. Make a some sort off raised structure: You must have gravity for the rain barrel to work

Tip: make sure your raised structure lines up with your rain barrels gutter whole

3. glue the attachment to PVC.

4. Cut a tiny whole to fit the PVC pipe trough, screw it in the inside with the rubber washer on the inside. (I had to use a few coats of PVC glue to keep it from leaking.

5. Get you trash can, cut a whole in it and make your gutter fit into that whole (fit filter around gutter). Try to fit it as snug as possible.

6, Then you can screw your hose bib on.

You have a rain barrel.