The Rain Barrel

Last summer I heard about the benefits of rain barrels. They reduce pollution, keep water away from the foundation of your house, reduce erosion, reduce city water use, and plants like untreated water better. I pitched the idea to Jesse, and he didn’t love it because all the rain barrels were ugly; the pretty ones were very expensive.

This spring I saw an opportunity to make a rain barrel through Community Education. I jumped at it and even invited my co-worker Lauren to join me (her husband also thought rain barrels were cool). We “made” our barrels (the guy teaching the class was a little nervous about us using the power tools), but there were many more steps in the rain barrel process.

The rain barrel needed painted to reduce algae inside the barrel. It needed raised up on level cinder blocks (Jesse checked it with a level), and the gutter needed re-routed.

We finally had everything ready for last night’s rain. We didn’t get very much rain (0.38 inches total), so we didn’t know how full our 55-gallon rain barrel would be. To my excitement, it was FULL…all the way to the top. This morning I was able to water all of my plants using fresh rainwater.