Saving Water Hints from the State of Florida

**Judi Dial** · 03-12-2009, 08:45 AM

I stumbled upon this today when I was looking for information about rain barrels, something DH and I are considering.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting reading and thought that it might be useful for someone else here.

Judi

link:
http://www.swfwmd.state.fl.us/conser...pleWaysWeb.pdf

**MoonMommy** · 03-12-2009, 09:49 AM

About your rain barrel...are you going to make one or buy one? I have looked for them around my little town, but we only have a small Home Depot and I haven't found one here. I have been told that Lowes has one, but I am not adverse to making one.

**Judi Dial** · 03-12-2009, 09:53 AM

I'm planning on buying one. I think I'll ask my neighbors if they want one too, as I can get a better deal on them if we buy 6 or so. But as I'm not home at the moment, right now it's just research.

I'd found a company that sells reconditioned food-grade barrels and that's what we were considering. If it saves us having to pump it, it saves that electricity and also makes our veggie/flower garden that much "greener."

Judi

**MoonMommy** · 03-12-2009, 09:56 AM

Our water is very expensive. Anything I can do to cut the cost as well as be more "green" I would love to do.

**rainbowgc** · 03-12-2009, 01:00 PM

I need to find a rain barrel. I am in Florida and we are in a drought.

**Grainlady** · 03-13-2009, 12:31 PM

This will be our 3rd year with rain barrels and we need to add to the capacity. We have a variety of containers, including red recycled food barrels that already have a brass faucet on them (nice size and the faucet is a plus), but 1,000-gallons is just barely enough. We water the landscape plants and garden, but it's not enough water to always do the "postage stamp" size patch of grass in the front yard.

It takes 1/4-inch of rain to fill a 50-gallon barrel at our house.

All the containers we have, including the recycled 50-gallon food barrels (which still smell like olives - or whatever was stored in them - from Greece), were purchased at our local farm supply store and range in size from 210-gallons, 165-gallons, and 50-gallons. Each year we've added more containers.

Some general information:

1. Be sure they are placed on a flat surface so they remain stable. You don't want them sinking into soft soil and falling over. We also secure all our barrels to our house using nylon webbing with clip connecters (we get the webbing at our ACE Hardware Store from a bulk amount and cut our own lengths, add the clips - which are also sold at ACE).

We purchased fiberglass pads for the base for many of our barrels. These pads are used outside for air conditioner units to set on, and they come in a variety of sizes. Concrete pads would also work, and you can form your own or purchase ready-made. A sheet of ply-wood would work, but will need replaced occasionally due to weathering. Some people build a "table" for the containers to sit on. Our first barrels we placed on concrete blocks WITHOUT a base, but they sank into the soil under the pressure of the 165-gallon containers.

2. On top of the flat surface, place concrete blocks. The higher off the ground you place your rain barrels, the more gravity feed you will get from them and the faster the water will flow out (especially important if you use a watering hose). You can also use a submersible pump in the container attached to a hose and sprinkler for watering.

Be sure to go up at least 1-course of blocks so you can get buckets/watering cans under the spigot. I have a large collection of water cans (watch those end-of-summer sales) and keep one at each of our containers because we use them daily for hand watering.

3. Barrels/containers can be linked together, especially anywhere you have a long run of gutter. We linked two 165-gallon containers on one end of a long run of gutter, and two 50-gallon containers on the other end of the run.

We use the large barrels to water the 10-foot strip of grass on the edge of our property. That's the only grass in the back yard (right-of-way for underground utilities). We connect a soaker hose to the barrels and the water slowly seeps into the grass from them. You can link the containers high - which means the first barrel will be completely full before the second barrel will start to fill. Or you can link them low - and they fill at the same level, and will drain at the same level. We have some of both - it depends on how you will use them.

4. Water diverters. This is how you divert the water from the downspout to the barrels. There are several methods and types of diverters for this, so you may want to look at different ones. I did a lot of study before choosing the diverter we use.

Many examples show a screen over the barrel and the downspout dumps directly into the barrel and the screen keeps mosquitoes and tamelife and wildlife out. This is the least expensive and least effective because the barrel is open and allows a large percentage of water to evaporate. All our containers are closed containers. Water enters through a hose from the Downspout Diverter to the barrel.

This is the diverter we've installed from Gardener's Supply Company - http://www.gardeners.com/Downspout-D...efault,pd.html

We remove the diverters in the fall and place a sleeve of downspout materials in the space where the diverter is placed. The first two seasons we left the diverters in place but they get an ice dam with frozen water and that creates a whole other set of challenges.

This particular diverter eliminates having an over-flow hose on the barrels because once the barrels are full, the water diverts down the downspout automatically. If your system has an over-flow hose, make sure it is directed AWAY from your house. In a gully-washer rain, expect your gutters to over-flow if you have a diverter on a downspout. They can't keep up with extreme amounts of rain like that.

5. If you use white/opaque containers, you WILL get algae. This was a lesson we learned our first summer. We placed barley bales in these containers to rid them of algae. Barley bales are available at farm supply stores and are used in the water in horse tanks. The second year we purchased special paint from Sherwin Williams for painting the white plastic barrels and painted them to match our house color.

Our first container was an elipitcal shaped container (210-gallons), designed for hauling liquids in the back of pickups, and we spray-painted this container to look like a giant ladybug - so be creative...

6. The large containers we purchased are designed for farm use and all have bung holes at the bottom. We fitted these holes with plastic faucets from True Value Hardware Store. We found a combination of things that worked for each size hole.

7. Get containers that you can easily handle. You do have to clean them out. We clean ours once or twice during the season, as needed, and ALWAYS at the end of the season when we empty them and winterize them. We power wash them and rinse with soda/water, and rinse again.

8. Watering - We generally do hand watering with watering cans (our summertime exercise program. We have drip irragation in the small veg. garden and I water it by filling a large, shallow, container with water from the nearby water barrels and use a solar-powered pump to feed the water to the irragation system. Soaker hoses also work fairly well with the large containers.