How to Build: A Rain Barrel

are you interested in collecting rainwater and want a simple do-it-yourself method this video will describe how to retrofit a 50 gallon drum into a rain barrel for roof runoff the Snohomish Conservation District has been offering workshops with interest from rural and urban homeowners alike on why rainwater harvesting is important and how to do it rainwater catchment is a valuable way to reduce the impact that stormwater runoff has on your own property as well as on our local waterways many of us have drainage issues at home from wet basements to flooded lawns a rain barrel helps to slow roof runoff and direct the overflow to parts of the landscape that can absorb it this also reduces the amount of stormwater runoff that is negatively affecting our local water bodies a rain barrel can also provide a source of inexpensive high-quality water perfect for watering the garden during our dry summers and a home improvement project that will really make a difference these are the tools and parts you will need for this project they will be explained later in the video and you can also print them out from our website this is the rain barrel site before any construction has been done this is approximately where we're going to be placing the barrel we have a downspout here we're going to bring the downspout along this wall and drop it straight down into the barrel this is a 55-gallon food-grade barrel a little bit of anatomy of the barrel there are two bungs here on the top of the barrel they each have caps on them and then a rim all the way around it these bums are all recessed a little bit which will be important later on the construction it should be noted that this barrel needs to be used specifically for this installation there are many other different types of barrels but if you're going to use our setup you need to use this type of barrel we're also going to be putting an overflow hole right here in the side of the barrel and then an outlet who here in the bottom that we will connect our hose to for irrigation here we have a hardened platform that we've made to put the rain barrel on top of this serves a couple of purposes it raises the elevation of the barrel so it's easier to access the spigot that we're going to put on the bottom of the rain barrel it also raises the elevation so that we have a little bit more pressure going through the hose the higher you raise the barrel the more pressure that you'll have for watering the surrounding garden it serves as a hard platform to keep the barrel from sinking on one side of the other and it also is important that as as level as possible so that you don't get more weight from the water in one side of the barrel causing it to tip over you can make these out of any kinds of material bricks like we have here or flag stones or cinder blocks or you know the round of a tree just as long as it's raises the elevation as a level and is hard alright now we're going to drill out the holes for our barrel we're going to drill three holes we're going to drill one of the bungs on the top we're going to drill a hole on the side for an overflow and we're going to drill a hole in the bottom for the outlet I generally like to use a corded drill when I'm doing this battery drills do work okay but they don't have as consistent torque or power and this bit that I have in here is a four inch hole saw it has a pilot bit at the end that'll go in first to keep the blade from wobbling all over the place and then this is the hole saw you need to be very careful with this this hole saw it's very sharp it tends to buck when you start drilling so so you need somebody strong and and preferably experienced with these type of hole saws when you're drilling out your bum and then I'm going to switch over to a 7/8 inch spade bit to do the hole in the side and in the bottom when we're drilling out the bung we're going to make sure that our pilot bit right here goes right in the center of this cap and then you just drill it down a little bit to secure it and make sure that that pilot bits not going to come out and then brace yourself or for drilling the actual 4-inch hole okay here is the bung that's been drilled out this is going to be the inlet hole for our rain barrel so the downspout is going to come down and discharge directly to this hole and then the water will go into the barrel you'll notice that this hole is located and a little depression in the top of the barrel this is a good thing that means that the water will pool on this depression and then drip into the rain barrel instead of ponding around the surface of the barrel all the water should go straight into your rain barrel so you shouldn't have too much pooling on top of it this is a six inch piece of gutter screen it's just wire rigid gutter screen that you can buy in most hardware stores we're going to place this over the hole and we're going to screw it down using six screws and washers this is going to act as a filter for a larger debris so leaves needles that come on your downspout will be collected here instead of going into your barrel where they can clog everything up to screw down the gutter screen we're going to use a number six half-inch sheet metal screw and a 1/8 by 3/4 inch fender washer the screws going to go straight through the washer and then we're going to screw it down through the mesh of the gutter screen we're now going to switch to a 7/8 inch spade bit and we're going to drill the holes for the overflow and for the outlet we were going to drill the overflow hole 90 degree angle from our inlet so that the overflow can go can go that way along the wall and you want to drill this hole as perpendicular to the barrel wall as you can and you want to leave about three inches from the top of the barrel to where your hole will be drilled it's a going to be important that you keep the barrel stable as you're drilling so you either need another person here helping you hold the barrel or straddle the barrel so it doesn't move very much you have some good control as you're drilling there's your hole we're now going to drill the outlet hole that your hose will hook up to that you'll be able to irrigate from now this is really important where you drilled your inlet you want your allit hole to be on the opposite side of the barrel from that because otherwise you'll have a downspout here and your wall here and if you drill it on this side your spigot will be going right into the wall you won't be able to use it very well so it needs to be on the opposite side of where your downspout is going to come in we're going to drill this hole about two inches above the bottom of the barrel that'll leave some sediment storage in the bottom so that you won't be pumping lots of sediment out of your barrel you will need to clean your barrel about once a year of that sediment that builds up we're going to put that hole right about there now that we've cut both of our holes our outlet hole and our overflow hole we're going to use a 3/4 inch fourteen NPT pipe tap to cut threads into these holes in the plastic of the barrel and then we're going to take our PVC pieces and screw them directly into the barrel this is a 3/4 inch fourteen NPT pipe tap we're going to use this to cut threads into the holes that we made in the barrel you can see there's these little teeth on it and then you stick it in the hole and as you turn it it cuts threads into the plastic of the barrel that we can screw the PVC pieces directly into you need a crescent wrench in order to do this and basically you're just going to to put this right into the hole like this and then screw all the way down until until your threads have been cut into the barrel as you tap this it's really important that the tap goes in as straight as possible so it needs to be perpendicular to the barrel and then be screwed straight into the barrel usually the best thing to do is to just kind of get it started with your hand and then look at it occasionally make sure that you're going in straight and then when you have a good bite from the teeth move to your crescent wrench and use a crescent wrench to screw it all the way into the barrel you want to make sure that you you go all the way to the end of the threads because that will make your cuts nice and clean if you only go half way usually it's really hard to get your fittings to fit into the barrel so I'm going to keep screwing until I'm going all the way down just don't screw to them afar because then you'll end up with your pipe tap in in your barrel so that's probably good right there and then you just loosen it and you can unscrew the rest of it with your hand and then if you look in you see nice clean pipe threads that you can use your screw your PVC fittings right into and there you have nice clean threads cut into that 7/8 inch hole this is the assembly for your overflow you have a 3/4 inch PVC threaded male threaded female elbow the threaded end is going to go directly into the overflow hole and your barrel and then on the female end we are going to put a pipe two hose adapter fitting this is a pipe two hose adapter these are the pipe fittings this will screw into your 90 degree elbow and then you will put your hose here for your overflow the threads for a pipe are different than the threads for a hose so you need to make sure that you have one of these otherwise you won't be able to connect your hose to your barrel so you're going to take a 90 degree elbow and your adapter and take the pipe fittings of the adapter and screw it into the female end so it will look like that that's what your overflow assembly is going to look like so then you take some silicone and just dab it I'll a couple of drops on the threads over 90 degree elbow like that right and we're going to screw the male end of our elbow right into our overflow hole like this you may also want to take a little bit of silicone and put it around the edges and then you're going to attach your hose directly to this and put wherever you want your overflow to go you're going to run the hose along the side and then out to your overflow location this is going to be your hose outlet assembly you have a two inch schedule 80 PVC nipple a ball valve three-quarter inch ball valve this is the ball valve currently in the on position and you can see as I turn it 90 degrees it will be off and a pipe two hose adapter the nipple is going to go directly into the bottom of the barrel and then the ball valve is going to tie to the nipple take a little bit a silicone again dab it around the edge of your nipple and then screw that into your rain barrel now that we have your barrel finished we're just going to take it and put it up on your platform make sure you settle it so that it's level and that the overflow is going the direction you want and the hose outlet is going to place you want we're going to put the downspout here so we're just going to bring the downspout along the wall and then directly into the end lever here and here we have the final product we have the barrel in place we've brought the downspout over and it's going right into our inlet of our barrel the Snohomish Conservation District frequently holds build-your-own rain barrel workshops if you are considering a larger system check out our other videos on connecting rain barrels and rainwater cisterns for more information visit better ground org

Channel: Snohomish Conservation District

Views: 95,675

Rating: 4.7465839 out of 5

Keywords: rain barrel, Do It Yourself (Website Category), rain water collection

Id: KOCsdxoAUxA

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2013