Getting ready to acquire the thing materials to start collecting rain water off my barn roof (metal).

Ill get 1 or 2 55-60 gal rain barrels, diverter, etc. I need to put a gutter on it as well. I have a creek right behind the barn, so itll be super easy to divert the over flow into that..The water will be for emergencies, etc, its about 30 yrds from the house, so i can fill up 5gal MWCs if need be.

Ill post pics once its all said and done.

One question - where is everyone getting their materials ? I live in BFE, so Im pretty limited to mail order.

We got our set up from Lexington Container in KY, they have the barrels and all the conversion parts/kits.  If your in WV it might be worth a drive to avoid shipping costs.

So did I for barrels and gas cans. I'm only 30 minutes away. Pretty cool store to browse around.

I used cheap plastic gutters and a galvanized cattle tank for my water collection (its for my horse's drinking water)

This is what I have on the front porch.  It's okay, but you have to get the stand otherwise the spigot is almost on the ground.  The spigot itself is fine, but the threading for it was kind of botched so I ended up using silicone on it.  I also used this to collect from my downspout.  The next setup is going to be 55 gal food safe drums.

They fill up FAST.  Mine aren't anything pretty to look at but they work great.  The blue ones are in the back part of my property away from the house attached to a shed.  So I don't ever see them unless I am back there.  3 food safe 55 gallon barrels.  Homemade manifold system using PVC, very easy.  The tall pipe on the right is the overflow.

The water tote is hooked up to my chicken coop roof.  I just threw up a length of gutter and a spout.  It's got an overflow that goes out the back and along the ground to a fenceline.

Nice setup.


Ive completed Stage 1 - installed the gutters on back of barn.

Stage 2 is to buy barrels and all connections

Stage 3 is build barrel stand and connect it all together.

ill have pics once its all said and done..Ive got the design figured out for the cross overs and over flows. jus need to get the barrels..

No pics, but I use the big IBC cage tanks. Have two on the back of our 36x36 barn and catch water off half the roof. I think it takes about 1.25 inches of rain to fill them. I pump water out of them with a cheap harbor freight 120v pump.  I bought several rolls of black plastic wrap from eBay to reduce algae.

I'll post some pics tomorrow.

Been looking up multi barrel connections,,,i seen ppl connecting at the top and some at the bottom. I was going to connect on the side, near the bottom (I cant turn the barrels im getting upside down, they have removable lid).

My plan is to have gutter go straight into the first barrel, with the over flow about 6 inches down and then the barrel-to-barrel connector about 3-4 inches from the bottom, going to each barrel and then a spout on the end barrel, but will probably put spouts on each barrel to be able to drain them.

How is the flow on your creek DT...

On the cabin in canukistan we gravity fed the water.
Water ran to a catch/basket of sorts up stream from the cabin to a pipe that ran to the manifold at the sink. Good 2-3 gallon a minute flow.

Could be a good experiment. Gravity feed to fill containers to be treated/filtered...or used for livestock /irrigation.

I'm stuck hand pumping for my back up water lmao.
But with the drought we're having rainwater collection would be a good redundant source for us.

The creek behind the barn is seasonal, If we have a good few days of no rain, itll dry up. We are obviously in our rainy season,,hopefully get barrels soon, lol.

Still be a good experiment and have the infrastructure in place..to supplement. 
How's water rights etc up there...
Maybe have a wet weather divert trough to feed a small pond or larger resivor . Simple plank dam,set up.

Sorry.
You got my mind mush turning lol 

If you have a spring you could use a water ramp to pump the water. They are cheap to build and use no electricity.

That was cool. I ended up watching a few of those videos...i like that idea...would just have to figure out where im pumping it to, how to incorporate tanks or what not and feed the house, if anything can feed like toilet or washing machine

Fill valve on a toilet May not work gravity Fed or with super low pressure.if it does it'll be super slow to fill..may not be an issue. 
But could be manually filled and per each flush as well.
Washing machine would be the same. Just take longer. And burn electric.

Washing machine for sure would probably be no go..the toilet is a 1.6 gpm type,,so even slow filling wouldnt be a problem.

Right now the only thing I can see the ram pump doing is filling water/rain barrels, we plan to use the barrels for emergency, watering plants and might get a 110v pump for garden house and be able to wash off vehicles, etc.

If we dont have much rain or barrels are getting low, the ram pump could pump into the barrels if the creek is flowing..So, ill probably make one. lol....mine will be a short run, the barrels are about 5-6 feet from creek but the top of barrel will be atleast 10 feet above the creek.

I've thought about this for a while now; I didn't post originally because I didn't want to make anybody feel like I was bragging etc. I also understand that a system like mine will not be for everybody; it requires electricity and a fairly expensive capital cost, which goes against what many here are striving for (self-sufficiency at an affordable price).

The people that built my house were millionaires, money was no object to them while building. The well is a low-production well and they wanted to have a way to add water to the pool, water plants etc without using well-water. The house roof water is collected and drains into an underground cistern (similar to how it was done with many farm-houses in years past). The cistern holds 8,000 gallons. In the cistern is a pump, controlled by a pressure-switch and pressure tank that are in the crawlspace. That water is connected to all of the outdoor frost-free hydrants (there are also some outdoor spigots connected to the well-water if I want well-water outside). This system is the ultimate for everyday life, but will pose "some" challenges in the event of a electrical failure SHTF. Worst case, I can always take the lid off and manually dip water out of the cistern with a  bucket.

Bragging-

" yo..fellow internet peeps..check out my 50000000000000$$$$ water set up...who the hell uses blue barrels and pvc, stainless or go home peasants "

Your not bragging .

Have a tube connecting both barrels so the water from the downspout will fill both.
And I have about a two foot drop to my garden, so gravity works well enough for watering.

Get'n it going now. lol.

Put up 35' of gutter last week and been working on the table/stand , waiting on barrels to come in............
Today got my barrels and some parts in, still waiting on a couple more parts *gutter to barrel connection and faucet for end barrel*.






Once barrels are filled, wanna hook up garden hose and see what kinda pressure I get from them.

Going to get another barrel, I used standard lumber that was 8 ft long, so I think I can squeeze a 4th barrel on there, be a total of 220 gals give or take.


*edit - as far as everyone else's system. we would love to seem them, no matter how big or how small , how cheap or how expensive,,we all love new and different ideas, so post up if you wanna.

subscribed!  Looking for ideas for my new post frame shop.

That roof will fill those barrels up FAST.  You should line that whole wall with the barrels, you will wish you did once it's up and running!

There really isn't much to show in pictures. The tank and all the electrical/water lines are run underground so it would just be a picture of down-spouts going unground, a mound with a man-hole access sticking up, a pressure-tank and some pipes under my house, and 3 frost-free hydrants sticking up around the outside.

That being said, I will go into more details about what I know I have, what I think I have, and what I plan to do for improvement. The "millionaires" weren't exactly the most informative about how things worked etc so figuring out what I actually have has been a discovery process.

What I know I have: Several downspouts go into PVC pipe and go underground. 2 of them I haven't been able to successfully trace so I don't know for sure if they go into the cistern, 2 others go in the direction of the storage tank but I "lose them" part way there. But water is definitely getting into the tank because I used a couple thousand gallons a few months ago and it refilled within a few weeks. The tank is a 10 X 20 X 7 (outside dimension) concrete tank buried under a dirt-mound down-hill from the house. It has a 3' diameter riser coming up out of the ground with a man-hole cover that is removed for maintenance etc. In that cover is a small opening for a "dip-tube" for checking water level. Somewhere in the system is an electric 220V pump, similar to a submersible well-pump; I suspect this is in the tank but I don't know for sure. That pump is connected to a pressure tank under the house, when the water is turned on and the pressure inside the tank drops, a pressure switch triggers the pump to turn on, raising the pressure and refilling the pressure tank. From the pressure tank the water pipe exits out the house foundation and is buried underground where it magically pops up at 3 frost-free outdoor hydrants, 1 near the pool, 1 near the garage/my current temporary garden, and 1 at the front of the house.

What I think/suspect: I suspect there is no means of diverting or "flushing" the run-off to get rid of the first, dirty water that comes off the roof. I plan to correct that when I can. Thankfully I have a backhoe at my disposal so I can add a "flush tank" to it at my convenience.

What I don't know: where the pipes for the hydrants go, where the electrical line travels underground, or where the drainpipes go. I have plans to trace and mark those, but I need an underground utility tracer to do it and I don't have one of those. FWIW, if you have underground pipes that need traced you can do it with a utility tracer by fishing a wire down the pipe then connecting the tracer to that wire. This is my plan when I can manage to borrow one or bribe somebody to come trace for me.

Lastly, I will know more within a few weeks. I'm currently in the process of making some repairs on the pool, when that's done I will have to use 2 cisterns full of water to refill the pool. At some point when the cistern is empty I plan to get inside and wash it out and see what I can discover from inside the tank.

My 3 barrel system is done. I plan to add more barrels. my "barn" only goes another 5-6 feet to the left, so I could get another 3 maybe 4 barrels along that wall.

Over flow is covered, once I get pics, itll show how its all laid out.

Gutter drains down into Barrel #1 thru the lid (having removable lid made things much much easier), the over flow is on the barrel itself and about as high up on the side as you can get. The barn is right beside my creek and the over flow goes directly into the creek.


And then barrel to barrel connectors are a few inches up from the bottom,  on the flat part of the barrel (barrels taper at the top and bottom) and then they are daisy chained.

To drill the connectors, I drilled and mounted the first one and then put the barrels on a level spot and butted the connector to the barrel, traced and drilled. So, all the connectors are in the exact same spot on each barrel.

Finally picked up a 1 1/4" paddle bit and mounted the brass faucet, designed for water barrels.

Now need to get a garden hose, but first gotta wait for some rain. lol.

Pics coming later on..............

Overflow pipe is 1" flex tube, I have it going thru a spare piece of 2" so I dont hit it with weedwacker and to keep it rigid so itll flow straight into creek.

*UPDATE*

We got a couple hours of good rain today. I checked the barrels, no leaks at the barrel-to-barrel connections nor the faucet spout. All 3 barrels are leveling out nicely, they are 1/2 full, thats roughly 80+ gals already . My gutters and whole system working great..curious to see when they are full and how well the over flow works..

So a few day or two of rain would certainly over flow them, esp, now they are 1/2 full now.

So yea, ya'll were right, they do fill up fast. I was honestly surprised.

Now I wonder why doesnt everyone do this that own a house..extra water is always good to have around , can even boil or purify for drinking/cooking if need be.

*EDIT II*

It started raining pretty heavy for the past 1/2 hour, checked on the barrels, they are full. Over flow is working great. Ill be honest, im surprised they filled up that fast but you guys knew it. lol.

Is it cause of the 35' of gutter or jus quantity of rain ?  or both ? lol. I figured id get maybe 1/4 barrel full, not full FULL. lol.

I think the over flow can handle it...although now im dealing with already full barrels. Worse comes to worse itll over flow out the intake, not ideal but water will get out.

Expanding is a easy as adding barrel-to-barrel connections, the removable lid makes it  nice to get in the barrel, do what I need to and when it comes time to clean them out, etc.

My Barn is 1/2 roofed (lean to style) im using 100% of it, it all drains straight to the gutter, I checked this morning and the gutter had no standing water, so my angle was gradual but good enough to not rush the water into the barrel but not straight enough to allow standing water.

Yea, i can ,but i paid retail for everything on line, where I live, I simply cant find barrels, most everything else can be found / made locally if you look.

1) Gutters, brackets, end caps - local hardware store, used 4 (10 ft) gutter sections, cut the last one down, so have 35' total worth of gutter.

2) Barrels - http://www.bayteccontainers.com/oppldr55gal.html#gsc.tab=0 they were 79bux but at the time had free shipping

3) All other parts were off amazon but if you have Lowes/HD, you can get the parts there.

Barrel-to-barrel connector;

Fiskars Rain Barrel Connector Kit (59606935

Spout;


RAINPAL- RainPro Brass Rain Barrel Quarter Turn Ball Valve Spigot with Bulkhead Fitting

Down spout to barrel;

Universal Downspout to Drain Pipe Tile Adapter (White, 3x4x4) Color: White Size: 3x4x4, Model: abpDSadptr, Tools & Outdoor Store

Gutter-to-barrel connection;

Flex-Drain 85010 Downspout Extension

I probably have close to $400-500 into this whole system. The big cost was barrels, ive seen ones when I was in Tampa for $20-40bux each, wish I had got a bunch.

https://charlestonwv.craigslist.org/grd/6133191534.html

That's outta charleston....i know that's not your SO.
Could use a larger tote for a secondary bulk storage  

Yea, ive seen those around. If I'm down that way, ill check em out..That area is like Tampa,,you dont go unless you have to. lol.

This ^^^

The math is fairly easy to do. ~7.5 gallon per cubic foot

Lets say you get an inch of rain and you're capturing the water from a 30X60 pole-barn. 30 X 60 X 1/12 (1 inch = 1/12 foot) = 150 cubic feet = 1125 gallons

The "enormity" of the amount of rain that falls during a storm is really brought into perspective when you start to talk about irrigating large amount of land. IE, lets say you want to irrigate 1 inch of rain on 100 acres. 100 acres = 4,356,000 square feet 4,356,000/12 = 363,000 cubic feet of water = 2.72 million gallons. 1" of rain is really a large amount. Consider a heavy storm that passes through and dumps 4 inches on 400 square miles = 28 BILLION gallons

Yeah buddy of mine works near there for the road/hiway ranger junk you guys got up there. Sounds Lil froggyat times..
I was gonna search down by my brothers but Craigslist only shows south WV. He's over in nallen. 
Found some  on that listing .
I'm contemplating doing the large totes for back up.
I've already got a large one under the house and 4 barrels. But...rain is free lol 

Side note..watch those pavers once the ground gets soft,check for settling. 3 ,55 gallon tubs is not light lol . 

Yea, already keeping an eye on the table..been checking to make sure still in level. So, yea ill keep tabs on it...55 gal water x 8lbs per gallon  x 3 barrels  = 1320lbs sitting up on there. .lol..plus table weighs 100lbs or so..

Oh terrain here is so rocky, i wouldnt expect it to settle too much , if at all.

Not plumbed yet and needs one more barrel...but has room for a cord of wood underneath and am planning on trading a couple more barrels for some solar panels and batteries to run a pump for filling another planned set of barrels uphill for the garden. Should end up with about 300 gallons on hand.

The outflow manifold will sit about 5.5' from the ground and give decent pressure.

Attached File

That is crazy.  Makes me want to go pick up a few more from the guy up the road who sells the food grade ones for $20 each, and I even thought that was high when I bought them from him

Yip, trust me, i wish I had gotten a bunch in Florida,,same thing, 20-30 bux there. There isnt anything like that around here close, so, if i wanted some, I had to pay up, wasnt happy about it, but now have peace of mind with some stored water. Id like to get more, but will figure out some way cheaper...I have enough room where the others are to add up to 8-10 total..i jus have to build another table and put it beside this one...

You guys with your fancy setups .

Total cost was about $20.00 to buy the diverter that attaches to the gutter.

I would like to eventually get a larger barrel or two but I'm cheap so I'll wait until I can find a deal close to home.
Attached File

at my old place i had 12' of gutter on 12'x8' of roof feeding a 275 gallon tote
I expected it to fill up over the course of the month

it filled up in a afternoon I expanded to about 800 gallons of storage

I have always been a advocate of IBC totes if you can get them
(they are dirt cheap here)
but I need to update that to say do NOT rely on the factory valve in the bottom
2 out of 3 failed on me after a couple years chopped a hole in them to drain them and left them there when i sold the house

I use a waterhog due to space limitations, as well as the wife didn't want barrels on the side of the house.

rainwaterhog will get you there.

Ok, got a question...

Hooked up 25 ft garden hose,,without the nozzle, water will stream out, as long as the hose is not elevated at all. And I get almost nothing with the nozzle hooked up.

How can I get enough pressure to atleast rinse off a vehicle from car washing. I dont expect coin op car wash pressure, but jus enough to get soap off, and anything else I need to do with the water. lol.

I actually get decent pressure coming straight from the faucet, Id say its equivalant to the pressure in my house. jus with the hose hooked up, it drops to nothing.

I seen some electric pumps specific for rain barrels, but wonder if they will just keep trying to pump when not actually using the hose , would hate to bother unplugging and re-plugging pump to use it, but might come to that unless I figure something else out.


How are you guys actually using your rain barrels......

How are you venting the second and third barrels?  Just holes cut in the top?

Static head (the pressure when the water isn't flowing) is solely dependent on the difference in height from the surface of the water in the barrel to the outlet.  2 1/3 feet of height difference = 1 psi.

Dynamic head is more complicated, but basically flow is proportional to pressure and cross sectional area of the pipe.  But the pressure is a combination of static head and dynamic head, the latter being parasitic loss due to friction. a 25', 3/4" elastomeric hose has a LOT of friction.

TlDr unless you mount your tanks 75-100' in the air, you are going to need a pump to replicate house pressure.  Use the barrels for drip irrigation and bucket dipping.

Interesting that you mentioned that...before I actually got the barrels, I wanted to show the kids how barrels get filled with one single inlet. So, for an experiment, I got 2 coke bottles, drilled small hole at the bottom and put a short piece of straw to connect them, wasnt 100% water tight but did decent job. I left the cap on the 2nd bottle and filled the first one, barely any water get into the 2nd bottle, I then took the cap off and it equalized with the first one..Thought that was interesting

Back to your question, right now they are not vented, but I was going to put a vent in the last barrel, but wanted to see how it would without me drilling more holes. When I tried to use the water hose, I left the barrels as is , got hardly no flow like mentioned, decided to just take the lid off, same effect. So, not sure a vent hole would help.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I was asking @rogueboss.