Rain barrel redo

I awoke early this morning to two glorious sounds - a whippoorwill singing near my window and a gentle rain falling on my roof. I'm especially happy to have a rainy day today to test out the new and improved "back of the house rainwater catchement system". We've had these two, linked rain barrels set up back there for several years now, but it was definitely time for some improvements. In the old system, the downspout fed straight into the top of the rain barrels, which put the barrels right up against the siding. They were also sitting on separate concrete block bases which had settled unevenly and so the barrels were tilted all funky. The only overflow we had was a hole in the side of the barrels so extra water just formed a marshy area right near one of our foundation posts. Joe did a serious rain barrel renovation last year on the front of the house (where we have a series of 5 linked barrels), but the back of the house never made it onto the priority to-do list.

Joe is off serving at a 10-day meditation course near here, so I decided to buckle down and finally tackle this project on my own. I had help from Joe's uncles setting the barrels in place (even when fully drained they still hold at least 5 gallons a piece) and deciding how to reconfigure the downspout diverter to allow the barrels to be positioned where I wanted them, but I'm still feeling a major sense of accomplishment and pride in my work at having done this on my own. I can't wait for Joe to see it. :) Now we just need a good heavy rain (it'll take 2 inches to fill the barrels) to make sure nothing is leaking and that the downspout diverter is doing its job and sending water back down the downspout and away from the house when the barrels are full.


In case you can't tell from the photo, those barrels are completely level. And hopefully there'll be no settling this time because I dug down almost six inches and did some serious tamping.


The boots are back in bloom!