How to Build a Rain Barrel

This is probably my most favorite video on how to build a rain barrel. It is very simple and easy and takes no time at all.

Good News for the Rain

We got the call for the rest of our rain barrels. There is a local car wash that uses eco friendly soap by the 55 gallon drum so we asked if the guy could save us a few. He called and we picked them up. I have 4 rain barrels now. And we're going to be working out how to get them set up now that we spent the better part of the day running water through them to get them cleaned up. I know that a lot of folks say to use food grade barrels but I see no reason why this won't work. We have no plans to drink out of these barrels, we are going to water the garden with them and all the eco friendly car washing soap has been thoroughly rinsed out. If my carrots come out tasting like a car wash we'll get the food grade stuff. But for now, we've got free barrels and a weekend project.

And while we were out, I bought a cage for holding two suet cakes. We got that set up to encourage birds. We've got our hummingbird feeder out and we've seen the hummer from last year only twice and she hasn't been back. When I took the feeder down to change the water out for her I found out why. A small spider capped off one of the drinking flowers and had an egg sac in there. This will not do. I got it cleaned up and I'm going to get it all straightened out and put it back out for her with some nice yellow ribbons flowing off the edges. We had high traffic last year, but the bugs are moving in and so that means more spiders and if they are living in the food source of our favorite hummer, that means she'll go find easy food somewhere else.

The squirrels destroyed our bird feeder project. We didn't get a chance to even fill it back up before the critters ripped it out of the tree, tore it open and ate what they wanted leaving it ruined on the ground. So we currently only have seed in a small box on the back fence. The birds aren't as frequent now, unfortunately because they have to fight the squirrel. I'm going to have to get squirrel food so it or they will leave the bird seed alone. I really want them to be around because of the pest problems we're having even before the garden got started. Earwigs and centipedes, carpenter bees, palmetto bugs, mosquito eaters, ants and black flies have all but taken over and it was kinda scary how quickly they just moved in and started making things difficult.

Then they started coming in the house and that was when I started getting a little pissed off. I like keeping my doors open, but I can't do that with these insects walking right on in. I'm trying to refrain from going to the store and just spraying the entire yard with something not so healthy. The DE isn't working as quickly as I'd like. I'm seeing a sharp decline in the earwig population out back, but now I'm seeing them up front. It's like they just decided to move. I doused that area with a healthy layer of DE and they moved up onto the deck. So I doused the entire area around the deck, the trees, under the deck and I started at the entrance to the house if they thought they were going to get cute and walk in while I wasn't there. We'll see what happens.

Harvesting Rainwater

Did you know that 90% of the worlds rainfall is over the ocean? I warned you we'd get back to this and here we are. I've read on this quite a bit and have discovered two things. 1.) Havesting rainwater is a fabulous idea. 2.) Ingesting it without the proper filtration system is a bad idea. It isn't difficult to harvest rainwater, a few food grade barrels hooked up to your existing gutter system will do it and you'll have enough water to make sure your garden grows. That is small scale.

Large scale, you're looking at cisterns that are bigger than my minivan, piping, backflow supression systems, pumps, valves, two or three phase filtration systems... the list can get kinda long depending on what type of water harvesting you're in for. I like this guy's idea. A nice neat system that gets him through most of the year with the kitchen tap still on treated water from the city. An excellent idea, and affordable, too. He says it cost him about $1500 which is pretty good for all the money he saved.

I also found the American Rainwater Catchment Association. They have a wealth of information to help you get started on harvesting rainwater and if it is economical for you to do so. They also have links for the UK and the International Rainwater Catchment Association.

Interestingly enough, I found these videos on YouTube.









There are just a ton of these types of videos on YouTube.