Well, it might be alright. The other side of the coin is, do you have much that needs watering right now?

tj

'course not. I just love the idea of getting stocked up. I feel like I'm wasting rain! Crazy, I know...

cranberry15, I've been wondering the same thing. I just love having a full rain barrel at the ready. Handy for rinsing off hands and tools even if there is nothing yet that needs water.

Go nuts, even though temps get cold in April, it's usually not cold enough to deep freeze water. if anything, you might get a little thin layer of ice on top, but nothing that will damage your barrel. I have a barrel I keep stocked in my basement for watering my indoor plants, however, I only use clean rainwater I collect with an old resin patio table top. The roof water is too dirty for my indoor plants.

Joe

Cool idea Joe.
Yeah, I went for it finally. One barrel is all filled up after last week's rain. The other is waiting to be placed - I think I have DH convinced to put a gutter & downspout on my chicken coop so I can water the girls without all that hauling of buckets!

This week, I just built my simplified rain collection system. I'll start by explaining the "old" way. Basically, as I said, I would put that resin tabletop on top of a 5 gallon bucket. The water flowed towards the middle, due to the resin tabletop sagging over time. The water would funnel through the umbrella hole, into the bucket. Then I would carry the bucket down to my basement, which as you can imagine, got awefully tiresome. From there, I dumped the water into another 5 gallon bucket, one that has a bulkhead drilled through the bottem. The bulkhead basically makes a 1.5" pipe protrude from the bottom about 3", which sticks into the threaded fill plug on the 55g barrel lid. I tape a coffee filter around the pipe to filter out the bugs, cottonwood seeds, and other junk that might have been in the water. The problem are obviously the work with carrying the buckets of water down, lifting them up to dump into the filter bucket, and also, I was limited to collecting a maximum of 5 gallons of water per rainfall, unless I went out in the rain to get the bucket. Also, I would have to take off the lid, and scoop the water with a large cup, and dump it into my 2 gallon watering can. Fine enough, until now, when the barrel has about 6" of water left, and I can't reach the bottom very easy.

Now, my new system takes away all the work. Basically, I ran a 1/2 PVC pipe to the outside, where there is a valve, with a barbed fitting to connect some of that clear flexible pipe to. I took a 14 gallon rubbermaid tub and drilled a drain into the side, right at the bottom, which also has a barbed fitting on it. I can now place the tabletop on the rubbermaid tub, connect the tubing to both ends, and let the rain flow. Note that I installed a vent pipe immediately on the outside of the rubbermaid tub to allow easier draining. From the outside valve, it flows to my "filter bucket" where another valve is located. So, if I am home and able to monitor how full my barrel is, and whether I need to change the filter, I can just let the water flow. Should I be away at work or something, I can close the valve, and allow up to 14 gallons to collect outside, and then open the valve when I get home and let my 14 gallons of water come in for filtering. This should help my analness, because I always felt like I was wasting good rainwater when I used to reach my 5 gallon max and it was still raining. I also dropped in a submersible pump, which is piped up out of the rain barrel. I wired the pump to a momentary pushbutton to ativate it. Now, all I have to do is slide my watering can under the "fill pipe" and push the button. It takes about 5 seconds to fill my 2 gallon watering can.

So, no more carrying buckets of water, no more leaning into the 55g barrel to scoop water, and no more limitations on how much rain I can gather!

Joe

Holy crap. You are serious about this. I pretty much worry about my outside operation. I've only got a couple sorry houseplants. In winter I water them from the spigot between the basement wall and the water softener (well water).

Ya know, I used to just water with tap water also, but I'd constantly get a white crust on the soil, and a lot of plants with brown leaf tips. I did a bit of research and found that both hard water, and softened water can cause the white crust, due to the minerals in the water. I then switched to rain water, and let me tell you, I have MUCH healthier plants now. Also, if you think about it, all plants live outside, and get rain water naturally, so realistically it is the best thing for them. Also, tap water has things in it that are toxic to plants, like chlorine and fluoride, amongst many other things. Plus, there is lots of dissolved solids in tap water. Water can only take a certain amount of dissolved solids before it accepts no more, and the more you have, the less room there is to dissolve fertilizer. So, long story short, rain water is much better for plants than tap water or well water.

Joe

Okay, so what do you do in winter? Do you stock up enough to last until spring? Or I guess melted snow could work. I seriously have 1 jade and 3 African violets and that's it.

For winter I make sure my 55g barrel is full to the rim. This winter I used ALL of it, but for you, with only a few plants, you could get by with less, probably 10 to 20 gallons. I started this whole 55g barrel thing with the intent of being set for winter. Before that I just had buckets of rain outside that I used spring to fall. Now I just draw water from my barrel, and refill as needed. I would suppose melted snow would work, as long as it's from an area well away from any roads where salt might have splashed on it. From what I understand, 1" of rain equals roughly 12" of snow, depending on the water content/heaviness of the snow, so it would take a lot of snow to get much water. For anyone who isn't as gung ho, and doesn't need as much, just collect it and store in a rubbermaid tub or something, even when you don't need it.

Joe

Joe