Here is what I made about 2weeks ago. Each can is 32 gal so I have I have just under 64 gal of rainwater when full. The location of the overflow drain does reduce the total capacity, but not by much. When the cans are about 1/2 full there is enough water pressure to fill a 5gal bucket in about 10 sec. The only problem is the left can has slow leak at the drain, I may just have to cut it off and reapply silicone to seal it up. Anybody got any ideas on keep the water from smelling like swamp water? With the first rain after I got it up, there was a LOT of pollen in the water, well that pollen floated to the top and is now "pond scum". Primary use of the water is to water the garden, hopefully I'll keep my water bill a little lower this year and I wont be putting chlorine, flouride, etc. on my plants (all crap that is in my city water). Edited to add: the end of the spigot is threaded so I can attach a garden hose to it as well. re-edited to fix image, no my image, but it's what I made.
Smell and Treatment can be accomplished in the same manner swimming pools use. Chlorine, the sun kills the chlorine with time, Charcoal filters, or Ozone injection, or salt.
We have three storage barrels(55 gallon) at the ready and have a stream on our property. Our water source is well water, powered by electricity of course, but our generator is hard wired into the house.
Fortunateson, Nice barrel. Quick question, how are you handling overflow? I didn't see any mention of that. Are you just going to let the barrel run over?
For now I'm just letting it overflow. After it fills up, I place the divertor back into the downspout until I need another refill. Crude, but that's all the work I'm willing to do for now I suppose I could add another fitting on the top for overflow, but the only ones I've found were garden hose size. I don't know if that's sufficient with some of the downpours we get here in NC.
I made the fitting on mine. It's not water-tight, really doesn't need to be for overflow. I just wanted to be able to divert most of the overflow away from the house. I used a 2" pipe - I'm hoping that will be sufficient, if not, I can upgrade to a 3" pipe
Maybe I'll try something like that. I've had some luck sealing up contraptions like these with neoprene washers.
