Rain Barrel

Photos of this installation were on the disk of my squashed camera. Putting this together was not difficult and of course, with just a little rain--the statistics are on the Fiskars website--it is full. We installed two so now we can harvest and save enough rain water to take care of our gardens!

We chose the Fiskar because of the gutter insert. Fiskars is one of the only, if not the only, system with a built in overflow system. Once the barrel is full, the water no longer flows into the barrel, but through the gutter again. I wanted their terra cotta "Tuscan" barrel but couldn't find it anywhere locally and it wasn't sold on the internet either, although it was featured at the Southeastern Flower show. If a rain barrel can be attractive, the terra cotta barrel would be the one.

The most difficult part of this project was getting the pavers under it level. The base has to be level for safety reasons. A full barrel this size weighs around 450 pounds. Cutting the gutter pipe seemed difficult at first, but once tried and looking back, it wasn't difficult at all.

The last thing that we need to do is find two adaptors for the water spigot on our two barrels so we can attach a hose. Some barrels come with a hose spigot.