Not Made Of Money

Last week I wrote an article on ways to save money on your water bill. I received some great reader comments and I wanted to highlight one of them!

From Sheila at http://enduremyworld.blogspot.com comes this info on making your own rain barrel:

I also suggest rain barrels for you watering your plants. My uncle sells rain barrels on craigslist for $75 with local delivery.

There are different variations of how to do this on the internet, but this is his method.

(1) 50 gallon plastic barrel (call around to restaurants to see if they have any empties wasting space. My uncle gets them from free to $15).
(1) outdoor water faucet (to connect garden hose)
(1) outdoor water valve (optional- to connect multiple barrels together for overflow)
(1) piece of scrap gutter about six inches long
(1) pool filter
(1) bolt

Instructions:
Install outdoor water faucet and/or valve about a foot from the bottom.
Cut hole a snug hole for the gutter scrap
In the middle of the gutter scrap, insert bolt through the width of the gutter. (this is only to keep the gutter from slipping into the barrel. It doesn’t attach to anything)
Insert pool filter into gutter (we don’t want leaves and trash in the barrel)
Slid the scrap gutter into the hole and you are done with making your rain barrel!

Final step, is to place barrel under the run-off for your gutter.

What a great idea! I think we will try this ourselves.

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