Rain, Rain, Come and Stay

Author:  Spring

One thing Mr. Spring and I noticed when we first moved to Syracuse is that it rains a lot.  We knew that we would install a rain barrel when we bought a house to turn all of the rain into a positive thing. After finishing the patio and adding grass to our backyard, we figured the next thing was the rain barrel.  This project was very easy.

 We decided to build a mini patio so the rain barrel would have a place to call home.  This was easy since we knew how to build a patio, and we already had the supplies left over from our patio project. You can read about our patio here.  Here is the hole we dug to start with the mini patio.

 Once we dug the hole, we added the runner crush and packed it down.

After packing down the runner crush we added the sand and leveled it off.  We started laying the bricks to create the patio.

 Here it is the finished mini patio.  This is where we placed the rain barrel.

 We purchased a rain barrel from the local hardware store.  Yes, you can build your own, but we decided to purchase a rain barrel kit instead.  The first thing we had to do was drill on the side where a tube connects to the rain barrel.

Next up Mr. Spring cut the gutter.

Once the gutter was cut, we added the next piece to connect the gutter to the tube and the rain barrel.

There is the magic piece that makes it all work.

Here you can see the finished project.  Disregard the looks beside and behind the rain barrel.  We still have some finishing touches to do on our yard.  The barrel has a spout with pretty good pressure.  Right now I am using the water to water my window boxes. You can see the window boxes here.

After two rains here, our rain barrel is almost full, and it holds 70 gallons.  The back of the house gutters all lead to this barrel. Like I said, we get lots of rain.

Cheers!