Step 5: Final result
With my setup, the larger hole in the lid of the first barrel is placed directly under the downspout. If not all of of the water goes into the hole, it will pool on the lid itself and eventually overflow into the opening.
You can optionally insert a spout near the bottom of the first barrel. This barrel should be high enough off the ground the permit a bucket to be placed under the spout. If you also want a spout on the second one, the whole setup is going to have to be raised unacceptably high off the ground. With a previous rain barrel that we had, we found that the spout filled the bucket too slowly. That was true also if we connected a hose to it. With the current setup, my wife said that she would prefer that the barrels be kept lower off the ground and she simple takes off the lids and dips water out of them. This makes it a much faster operation.
Although I haven't done it yet, will somehow fixed some sort of netted material (such as the bag that onions are sold in) over the openings of each barrel. This is to prevent debris from going into the barrels and to prevent mosquitoes from breed there. There is no easy way to do this. I thought of using velcro to hold the material in place.
You will notice that there is no mechanism for letting the second barrel to overflow in a controlled fashion. Note that I have calculated that a tenth of an inch of rain will fill one barrel. If you get a half inch of rain, the second barrel will definitely be overflowing. For my arrangement, the water simply flows over the top and down the sides. Since our house is built on a slab, this is no problem for us. On the other hand, if you feel there is a need to lead the excess water away from the house, just drill another hole in the second barrel and use a similar setup to direct a longer PVC pipe out further into the yard.
You can optionally insert a spout near the bottom of the first barrel. This barrel should be high enough off the ground the permit a bucket to be placed under the spout. If you also want a spout on the second one, the whole setup is going to have to be raised unacceptably high off the ground. With a previous rain barrel that we had, we found that the spout filled the bucket too slowly. That was true also if we connected a hose to it. With the current setup, my wife said that she would prefer that the barrels be kept lower off the ground and she simple takes off the lids and dips water out of them. This makes it a much faster operation.
Although I haven't done it yet, will somehow fixed some sort of netted material (such as the bag that onions are sold in) over the openings of each barrel. This is to prevent debris from going into the barrels and to prevent mosquitoes from breed there. There is no easy way to do this. I thought of using velcro to hold the material in place.
You will notice that there is no mechanism for letting the second barrel to overflow in a controlled fashion. Note that I have calculated that a tenth of an inch of rain will fill one barrel. If you get a half inch of rain, the second barrel will definitely be overflowing. For my arrangement, the water simply flows over the top and down the sides. Since our house is built on a slab, this is no problem for us. On the other hand, if you feel there is a need to lead the excess water away from the house, just drill another hole in the second barrel and use a similar setup to direct a longer PVC pipe out further into the yard.
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MechEngSk says:
Apr 30, 2010. 4:50 AMReply
Is that overflow pipe from barrel 1 to 2 large enough? There is going to be too much friction within it considering is so close to the top and therefore has low pressure or almost none. Also the downpipe from roof is presumably of a much larger diameter. The overflow to the second barrel is not going to be fast enough during heavy downpours and you will loose a lot of the water. The first barrel will fill up faster than it can overflow to the second.
10
rhackenb (author) says:
Apr 30, 2010. 5:05 AMReplyYou are probably right on this but in the end it doesn't matter. If it is a heavy downpour, much more rain will come down than will fit into the two barrels together and the excess will be 'wasted'. If I had to worry about where the excess would go, I would maybe put in 1 inch piping and then direct the excess from the second barrel further out into the yard. Anyone who decides to adapt this design should worry about where the runoff goes if there is a problem with the runoff staying near the house. In my case, the original downspout dumped into a runoff pan that was only two feet long and shunted the excess toward the yard. Our houses are built on a 'pillow' so that all the land leads slightly downhill from the house.
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