Eric Piehl comments on installing, using and managing 💦︎🛢 residential rain barrels

This article is about 💦︎🛢 residential rain barrels (North America) / waterbutts (🇬🇧 UK) / rainwater tanks (rest of world) / cisterns (where?), used for:

💦︎ watering your home's garden, and
slowing the flow of rainwater off your property.

Collecting/harvesting rainwater for domestic purposes (drinking, cooking and washing) is beyond my expertise.

We want to help, and seem to be among the Cultural Creatives, so in 2013, our ears perked up when our local environmental action council said we could:

extend the time that our plants get watered, while we
slow and reduce the amount of water that runs off our roof and driveway, down the gutters of our street, into our neighborhood's wetland, the unnamed creek behind the local Middle School, and continuing downhill into Carl Creek, the Grand River, and the Great Lakes of North America/Saint Lawrence River.

If so, all we needed to do was get and install some 💦︎🛢 rain barrels, which they offered us free. Well, for a small charge — basically the cost of fittings they put on plastic barrels; I think they said the barrels themselves were donated by our local cola bottler.

We bought three. Somehow managed to get them home in our sub-compact 🚗︎ Honda Fit/Jazz HR-V/Vezel (and e?) car in two trips. Good things we are good at thinking visually.

We asked our handyman to install them. He did a nice looking job, but the rain barrels seemed to have all kinds of problems, listed here by altitude — from top to bottom:

Problem: Getting water into your rain barrels from your gutters and downspouts, including handling ❄ winter.
Problem: Rain barrels filling up with algae.
Problem: Getting water out of your rain barrels, into your garden.

As I recall, these rain barrels came with little or no instructions, only the verbal instructions during our rain barrel workshop. After pushing them for years, WMEAC put up instructions for installing rain barrels. But they still seems massively inadequate.

After six years of frustration, punctuated by occasional conversations, modifications and experimentation, it looks like we may finally have solutions to each of these problems, which we present splattered among your various tasks:

Installation.
Use.
Management.

Installation

Problem: Rain barrels filling up with algae

Since the easiest solution to this problem probably is the task you should do first, we present this problem first …

If your rain barrels are transparent or translucent, they are going to quickly fill up with algae. Which will prevent water from flowing out of your rain barrel. Which will prevent your system from fulfilling its purpose.

To solve this problem, do one or more of:

Purchase a rain barrel that is opaque. Or nearly-so.
• After some failures ↓ below, our Good Ideas Rain Wizard 40-gallon plastic rain barrels #RW40 seem to be working well. Ours are khaki, to go with our house color. They aren't totally opaque — I can see some light inside while hosing it out. But opaque-enough to need rinsing out only once a year.
• In 2020 northern spring and summer, rain barrels have been impossible to buy, due to a shortage of plastic pellets used to make them. Has this relaxed?
Paint your rain barrel with a coating that is opaque:
• A plastic > paint primer, followed by housepaint does not work. It still grows algae, and eventually peels some.
• I later heard recommendations of, after sanding lightly, cover with very-dark Rustoleum 2X spraypaint. Suspect one would choose a shade that blends in with or accents your home's exterior. Have not tried.
🫧💦︎ Clean your barrels periodically. 📅︎ Weekly? Biweekly? Monthly? Sounds like a lot of work.

Problem: Getting water into your rain barrels from your gutters and downspouts, including handling ❄ winter

You are going to need a bunch of small self-tapping sheetmetal screws. I like the kind whose heads are shaped for a hex-drive instead of a screwdriver, and already-painted in something close to my house's color. And maybe some downspout fittings that go with the downspouts already on your home. You can probably take back any parts you didn't use. And you will need a tapemeasure, hacksaw, screwdriver (electric will go faster), and other 🛠 handtools.

If you live in a climate that freezes for more than 🕑︎ a few hours at a time (probably Plant Hardiness Zone PHZ = 8 or smaller), and you don't want to dismantle and reassemble your downspouts twice a year, purchase and install a downspout diverter valve. See photo ↘ below or to right. Examples include:

Aquabarrel Offset Downspout Diverter (perhaps for first barrel), and
Basic Downspout Diverter for Rain Barrels (perhaps for subsequent barrels).

Then you can add to your ☀︎ summerize and ❄ winterize task list to flip your downspout valves from channel to rain barrel, or visa versa.

In areas where you need no winter-disconnect switch, you could use Rainwater Collection System, Rain Wizard Diverter Flex Kit, or Fiskars DiverterPro Rainwater Diverter.

Other downspout diverter valves.

Problem: Getting water out of your rain barrels, into your garden

Some 👥︎ people use their 💦︎🛢 rain barrel water via:

A hose bib filling a watering can. Sounds like work to me. Raise your rain barrel high enough to fill your watering can in acceptable timeframes.
A drip irrigation systems, using tubing and emitters and such. Looks 👓︎ cool. Have not tried.
I have seen recommendations to protect your drip irrigation system or weepy soaker hose with a ▦ 200 mesh screen filter. Have not tried this with our new opaque rain barrels.
Weeper weeping soaker hoses.
I like this idea. "Set it and forget it." ("Fire and forget.") Flip on your rain barrels in the 🌱︎ spring, have them fill up in the first ☁💦︎ good rain, and let out their into your garden slowly, over the next 3–10 days. Until you flip your rain barrels off again in the 🍃︎ autumn. Awesome!

But unless your rain barrel is raised 7 m (23 ft) above your garden, your weeper weeping soaker hoses are going to weep hardly at all, soaking nothing. Not even when I removed a constriction disk in the hose's entry connection. That is because most weeper weeping soaker hoses are designed to run off your domestic water system, which is usually about 275–350–550 kPa (40–50–80 psi). If your rain barrel (like ours) is raised only ½ m (20 in), this arrangement will put out only about 10 kPa (1 psi) of pressure, when the rain barrel is full! And even less pressure as the water level goes down! They didn't tell us about this — neither the rain barrel people, or the garden center. Took years to find this out on our own!

So, you can do what I did — take your existing weeper weeping soaker hoses that never seem to weep much (section 11), and drill a 1½ mm (¹/₁₆ in) 🕳 hole into it, about 50 of them. In our 50 ft hoses (15 m), that worked out to be about 1 hole every foot (3 🕳 holes per meter), on average. In one stretch, that worked out to be about 2 holes by each shrub. I determined this size via some formulas, which I implemented in a spreadsheet. It works!

You can get special rain barrel soaker hose (for gravity irrigation systems) that will run off of this low pressure. But you can then never connect them to your domestic water service, as the high pressure will 💨︎ blow out your hose!

This was my backup plan, in case drilling ⬮ holes in my hose didn't work.

Our barrel on the sunny side of our house empties about twice as fast as the barrel on the shady side. If additional measurements confirm this, and after I figure out which one I like better, I may speed up one by ⬮ drilling more holes, or slow down the other by replacing its constriction disk in the hose's entry connection.

I have seen recommendations to protect your weepy soaker hose or drip irrigation system with a ▦ 200 mesh screen filter. Have not tried this with our new opaque rain barrels.
A rain garden.

Other installation issues: Drainage

As you had without the rain barrel, use a splashblock to get downspout water and overflow water away from your basement or foundation.

Grass can take a certain amount of flow. If that not enough, put in some nice ⬮ river rocks to be an ephemeral stream. If close to a basement, make sure the water moves way beyond your splashblock by laying down an impermeable barrier (we used trashbags, partially-overlapped leading downward), covered by lots of ⬮ stones.

Dig through any berms that may prevent water going away from your house. We did, to keep overflow from going under our shed.

Other installation issues: Space

Leave room for 👥︎ humans to circulate around your house. Perhaps by constructing a bioswale!

Other installation issues: Overflow

In even a short rainstorm, your rain barrel is going to fill up, plus a lot more. To avoid unplanned overflow and erosion, install an overflow hose or pipe to your existing splashblocks or other channels. If it doesn't have a built-in port for that purpose, make one.

Avoid These Common Mistakes When Using a Rain Barrel

Other installation issues: 🦟 Mosquitoes

Don't let 🦟 mosquitoes use your rain barrels as a larvae nursery.

Install a 🦟▦ mosquito filter over every entry. Our mosquito filters look like a ▦ window screen, including a ▭ rectangular frame. If needed, hold them in place with a ⬮⬮ couple fist-sized stones. Keeps out 🍃︎ leaves, too!

If you still have 🦟 mosquito problems:

Ensure you have no ♒︎ standing water on your property, including 🫧💦︎🐦︎♒︎ washing out your birdbaths once a week.
I hear that also effective are Mosquito Dunks, one per month of your problem, and follow directions.
Get your neighbors to do likewise!

Use

You really want to read the discussion ↑ above on using water from your rain barrels. Our installation is kinda set-it-and-forget-it (fire-and-forget). Others have more work to do. Oh, but don't forget the …

Management

This is going to be important, and no one warned us about this!

🌱︎ Spring — after nights no longer freeze for over 🕑︎ a few hours

If you have downspout diverter valves:

Flip the diverter valves from rain barrel to channel.
Ensure each 🛢 barrel has a 🦟▦ mosquito filter. If needed, hold them in place with a ⬮⬮ couple fist-sized stones.
After the first rain, verify that your barrels have filled. Or fill up your barrel with a hose.
◦ Verify that your barrels are draining as expected, e.g., in 3–10 days.
◦ If they are not draining, 🫧💦︎ clean them out as ↓ below.

Periodically, while in use, 🫧💦︎🛢 clean your rain barrels

Weekly? Biweekly? Monthly?

Shake each barrel, or measure the level of water, down from the top of your barrel. If full of water, or not draining as fast as it should, (consider the time your last rain ended), verify that your barrel is not plugged with algae. I disconnect the hose from the barrel's exit valve, and run a ║ wire through the valve, into barrel, running it in and out a few times, probing for any blockage. Works great to clear minor blockages, and works for a few seconds for major blockages.
If you have a wire-strainer here at the hose connection, 💦︎ clean it out.
If that was OK, test the hose attached to it. If necessary, open the cap at the end of the soaker hose, attached a real hose to it, and flush it out. Although look out for the special proviso ↑ above!
I have also heard a recommendation of adding Barley Straw Extract liquid, ordered from Pet Supplies Plus. Have not tried.
I have heard recommendations to, when a rain barrel gets algae:
◦ free your rain barrel from its attachments,
◦ mix up a bucket (4 liters or so) (a gallon or so) of 10% bleach (1/10 bleach, mixed with 9/10 water) (e.g., ½ liter bleach mixed with 4½ liters water) (e.g., 1 pint bleach mixed with 4½ quarts water),
◦ pour the solution into the barrel and tape shut any openings,
◦ roll it around a lot to distribute solution throughout,
◦ rinse well, and
◦ reassemble.
What do I do with the dilute-bleach sludge? Every two weeks? This measure sounds rather heroic.

🍃︎ Autumn — when nights might freeze for 🕑︎ a few hours

If you have downspout diverter valves:

Flip the diverter valves from rain barrel to channel.

Regardless:

Take down the barrels.
Hose out the insides. If you want, see the cleaning instructions ↑ above.
Drain the barrels completely.
Store the barrels elsewhere; or put them back up:
◦ upside-down with a ⬮ stone on each to keep them from 💨︎ blowing away, or
◦ right-side-up with a cover to keep out snow and such until 🌱︎ spring.
I do the latter, using thin waterproofed plywood (2), or plastic (2 more), trimmed to fit nice, extending just beyond the top of the barrel.

Or if you don't want to do that, at least make sure the barrels drain completely, so ice doesn't 💨︎ blow through the sides of the barrels.

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