Step 42: Final thoughts
This is it.
A few final thoughts:
A few final thoughts:
- The hose that drains from the top to the bottom barrel would benefit from being wider. Water can only pass through as fast as the smallest opening can handle. If I were to re-do it, I'd try to drill or cut a wider hole to accept wider fittings and tubing.
- There is most likely a way to pressurize the system with an air compressor for applications that need more pressure than gravity such as sprinkler systems.
- The bottom barrel would most likely benefit from a small hole drilled above the water line to let out air as it gets replaced with water. This will allow the top barrel to drain into the bottom barrel faster and at a more steady rate.
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For your implementation, you can just add a hose from the top-back of the bottom barrel to any place in the top barrel (it doesn't have to be in the upper bucket air pocket). This will serve two purposes 1) allow water to fill in the upper part of the bottom barrel; 2) increase the amount of flow from the top barrel to the bottom.
Great instructible, I know it's old. I'd be interested in you updating it with a follow up.
I plan to buy a couple barrels, and then convince my wife to let me do something like this.
What would you like to be updated on?
hey you getting your barrel only half way full, you should load the watter from the back. rigth?
just a sugestion . i will do my like that.
thanks
If you want to take advantage of the full drum volume, add a "dip tube" so that the water is deposited in the bottom of the drum rather than at the top. Problem w/dip tube in your configuration is the bending force it would put on the bung.
I'd love to do this and this looks nice enough my wife would approve. Too bad we get the majority of our rain in just a few months time.
What about an overflow (or did I miss that)? I recently built some rain barrels and found out the hard way that you need to expect to overflow these things, and plan for where you want that water to go. In planning for my barrels, I read that 1" of rain on a 1000 sq. ft. roof is about 650 gal. (That isn't that much rain on that big of a roof. Potentially, half of that rain on half of that roof would still overflow your barrels.) I originally just connected a 3/4" garden hose near the top of my barrel, but even that gets overwhelmed during a spring deluge.
I ended up plumbing the side near the top for a 2" (I think) PVC drain that directs the flow nicely away from the base of my stand and barrels.
I assume from your note about lower Michigan that you live there, so I also wonder about redirected water out of your barrels to store for the winter. I'm afraid if you leave water in there all winter, you might be posting again next spring on the rebuild/replacement of barrels.
I do not live in Michigan. I'm in New Jersey and I do not use my barrels during the winter for the reason you stated.
Assuming (for the purposes of this discussion) that your discharge port is at the RIGHT and you raise the left end of the barrel 15 degrees, the line from the bottom of the discharge opening will, now, intersect the line representing the bottom of the barrel forming a triangle. As you increase the incline/slope (to say 25 degrees), this triangular area is reduced in size (and implicitly, volume).
Following this exercise through the natural progression (increasing the angle) will continually reduce the area of the triangle (and, implicitly, the volume), until the angle is nearly 90 degrees.
Try it.
The best way to evacuate a horizontal barrel would be to have the discharge opening pierce the side of the barrel and be welded to the exterior so that no part of the discharge pipe intrudes into the barrel itself. With such an approach the barrel could be level or tilted but two degrees to accomplish what you desire.
Draw a circle. If you put the drain at any point above the very bottom of the circle, your vessel will retain that much more fluid.
What you could do, is to weld/braze a female threaded bit of pipe fitting to the outside of your barrel. Then, use a drill bit as large as will comfortably fit through this fitting* (w/o touching the threads!) and bore a hole into the barrel.
Then, screw your discharge piping to this fitting. THis should put your discharge a the lowest point in the barrel and require but a degree or two of "tilt" to fully evacuate the vessel.
- If you buy a 1.5" fitting, you will be able to bore a pretty decent sized hole through the barrel proper. Them, use a reducer fitting to get to the 3/4 inch or 1/2 inch piping you prefer to use.
Of course, if you search Craigslist (or similar), or check the Tractor Supply online catalog, you may find a 275 gallon container in a steel cage for as little as 60 - 75 bucks. They come with a six-inch top opening a 2-inch valve and consume about four square feet of real estate and are about four foot tall.This equates to a stack of five (5) fifty-five gallon steel drums.