My First Rain Barrel; Under the Eaves of the Roof
Sitting inside on a rainy, humid day I'm watching the rain and thinking about this precious resource and how easily we tend to take it for granted. Some arid parts of the country don't take it for granted but they abuse and misuse it just the same.Here in the Northeast where its abundance deceives us into thinking it's "ordinary" we often don't think about the need to respect it, appreciate it, and use its water wisely. So as promised, this posting is about water, and conservation of water, and rain barrels.
If you go back into my archives, June 2009, you'll find a posting that addresses water. But since water is THE most important resource we have here on Earth I feel it bears revisiting. For years we've heard that oil is our most valuable resource. I think I've heard that since I was a teenager. Well, look where oil dependence has gotten us? Into a big mess. Don't get me wrong there are things about oil that I appreciate such as the fact that it provides the materials for very lightweight eye glasses and tubes for transporting life saving medicine and blood. Even though using oil to transport us may have been a good idea 100 years ago it's just down right idiotic now. The same kind of foolish thinking that has us using clean drinking water to flush toilets. Again...stupid and it's time to change that thinking and behavior. Until we all have gray water hookup in our homes there are a few simple things we can all do to conserve this precious resource. That brings us to conservation and rain barrels.
Three years ago I heard about rain barrels while I was listening to a favorite podcast, The Alternative Kitchen Garden, http://coopette.com/akg I began looking up rain barrels on the internet and found they run around $100 each. Yikes! That's a lot. So I continued research and found you can make them. I downloaded the directions last summer and bought the pieces. All I needed was the barrel! I was in luck as a friend of a friend had one hanging around. It was a food grade barrel and clean. For a swap of some maple syrup I was a rain barrel richer. Well, now we're into year three of this rain barrel thing and we (who am I kidding- we; my husband made it) finally made the barrel. Gerry, my excellent rain barrel and cold frame maker got so excited about this that he made three more! Another friend of a friend had three of these food grade plastic barrels just sitting collecting pine needles out at his camp. He gave them to me to use for our newly started community garden. We only need two for the community garden so I was able to keep one myself. Two, two rain barrels! Wonderful. Well to be honest now I want at least 2 more.
Here's a picture of the newest "camp" barrel sitting out on the edge of our strawberry patch.
The blue rain barrel outside my kitchen door is placed right under the eave of the roof. There is no gutter feeding it but that would certainly make sense. We don't have a gutter there because of the amount of snow that falls off that side of the house. The first gutter we had there got annihilated by snow! The funny thing is that after 3 rain falls, one quite heavy, the barrel is completely full! That's 50 gallons of water just off that small section of roof. I'm seriously thinking about lining that side of the house with a network of rain barrels.
The white rain barrel that is out in the garden is 1/3 full of compost and 2/3 full of water. I used the garden hose to fill that. Each time I water seedlings/plants they get a drink of compost tea. (Benefits of Compost can be found in a May '09 post)The longer it sits the stronger the "tea" will get.
I have another veggie garden further back in the yard and NEED a rain barrel there too. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed having that barrel in my garden. No more need to lug out that hosing and running back and forth to the spigot turning on and off the water! Genius!
An issue with rain barrels that have open tops and are catching the rain from the roof is that their tops have to be removed so the rain water can fall in. Easy enough to do (easy for me to say, I didn't use the saw to remove it!) But once the top is removed and the barrel has even a little water in it a new problem arises. That is that now there is an open and stagnant water source. Not good as far as mosquitoes are concerned. But this is easy to fix, really! Just get some window screening and rope (we used electrical wire that was laying around from when we installed our invisible doggie fencing) of some sort. Cut a piece of window screen that easily covers the top and with plenty left over to hang down the sides a bit. Cover the top with this layer of window screening and use rope or whatever to secure in place. The photo above of the white camp rain barrel shows this well. Lets the water in, keep pesky buggers out so they can't lay eggs in the water. Perfect way to use less town or well water and save money at the same time!
Shortly I will upload pictures of the materials we used to make our rain barrels. To find directions online just type in "how to build rain barrel" into a google search. You'll find lots of sites including You Tube video clips.
Happy Gardening...and remember the wonderful saying from the American Horticultural Society: "Gardens make the world clean and fresh." I agree!
Mary
PS - Remember to turn off the water when you are brushing your teeth, when you are shaving, and when you are washing dishes. Don't let the water just run! :)
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