Tuesday, May 19, 2009

A Rain Barrel. Life is Good!


I just completed a rain barrel installation on our Edisto Beach house. Woohoo! This is the type of thing retired engineer curmudgeons like to do and talk about. It solves two problems. It intercepts the rain that pours off the front of my house and washes out the driveways, and it collects water for the plants. Our town water comes from wells and is so salty it's bad for the plants. Fortunately the town lets you draw free reverse osmosis drinking water from spigots at the town hall.

The white pipe is the overflow system. I drilled a bunch of 3/16" holes in the part that goes around the corner of the house to distribute the overflow water. OK, I paid a guy to install a gutter on the front of the house to catch the water. Fiddling around on the top of a jouncy 24 foot extension ladder is a good way for an amateur to end up dead.