Tropical Storm Beryl filled our barrel!

The clouds continued to roll in yesterday. And it seemed that all day we continued to say, "Looks like it is going to rain any minute... It just continued to tease me all day long! Our friend Jessica was over. About 3:00, Jessica and I were outside on the back patio playing a game of backgammon, and there it was! Just all of a sudden the skies opened up into a complete deluge!

We sat outside just to enjoy it since the patio was covered, we weren't wet. And then I jumped up and remembered that this was the first time the rain barrel would be used!!! It worked perfectly. And it literally did only take a few minutes to fill it up.

Monitoring the progress, I opened the top hole to see how full it was, and again - it was only about 5 minutes into the rain and the barrel was full. Sooo... I had to see how well the overflow was working... And it was perfect! It directed all of the extra water away from where we had an erosion problem. I couldn't be happier about the rain barrel!

Thank you Beryl for filling our barrel :-)

Additionally, the much needed rain helped the yard again. It's been a few weeks without a good amount of rain and everything sprung right back to life. In fact, another sunflower from the hill garden is in bloom and this one is a deep dark red!

Rain Barrel

The last two days have been all about the rain barrel. Sam and I found a beverage barrel online and picked it up for $25 about a month ago with all intentions of getting the pieces to make it functional. Rain came. More Rain came. And then, guess what, even more rain came. But still it sat by the gate to the backyard without any plumbing to be able to collect the rain and use it in the backyard to water the gardens.

Yesterday was the day! We were so excited to head to Lowe's with our list of things to get! We watched the below video a least a hundred times so that we could get everything.



This tutorial was the one that we felt best captured the look of the rain barrel that we wanted. Of course there are tons of different ways you can make a rain barrel, and none of them are wrong as long as it works, but this was the way we wanted it.

Lowe's was a bit troublesome when we got to one item that was in this tutorial that was said so matter-of-factly, that I thought it was just that simple to locate (this is when it helps to read the comments before you actually use anything on youtube). The "bung" was something that Lowe's has never heard of, did not have any clue what I was talking about and of course, had nothing in stock... I'll give them an A for the effort of trying to give me some ideas of alternative ways to make it work, but it still wasn't what we wanted. (Thank you Sam for sticking to your guns to make it the "right" way!)

So we went back and watched the YouTube video again to see what we were missing; but again, we got it... We understood and it sounded just as matter-of-fact the 101st time hearing it as the first. And then I said, "Hey... It looks like there's more comments about it down here..." Apparently finding the "bung wasn't so easy. Everyone else seemed to have the same problem.

Just in case you are ever looking for a bung, call it a bulkhead fitting. Don't go to Lowe's, Home Depot, a Pool Supply Store or Sears. You can look online and you'll find it. It will take about a week to have it shipped to you and it will cost a little more. Go to Ace Hardware. The cost was only $9.95 and was right on their shelves!

So again, we started yesterday on this "simple" project. This morning at about 10:00 we found the "bung" (errr. bulkhead fitting) and we were able to get home and quickly get the rain barrel all setup! Took about 1-2 hours after we got all the parts we needed.

I can barely wait for the first rain so that I can use the rain barrel for the first time!



(The bung is where the spigot comes out of the barrel)

The overflow diverts water to stop an erosion probelm that we have been experiencing.

A screen keeps debris out of the barrel.