I have a friend who laughs at my projects. She says I don’t do anything small. Now, I have to admit that she’s right.

This hot summer has really gotten me thinking about rain barrels. It’s the smartest thing in the world to catch otherwise wasted water and save it for watering the garden. It reduces run-off and conserves water. So smart.

In Texas, there are a dozen firms that specialize in rain catchment systems. I couldn’t find any in Minnesota, so I started talking to my neighbor, who is an excavator (and rain barrel enthusiast) about creating one for me.

Of course, I had a challenge. Normally rain barrels sit under downspouts. But our architect didn’t spec any down spouts for our house when we remodeled it this spring, preferring instead to have wide galvanized metal gutters without downspouts. They look great, but heavy rain drills holes in my lawn.

With the help of my neighbor and his crew, we installed a cool new system last week. The water falls into in-ground 12″ x 12″ basins placed under the end of each gutter. From there, it runs through underground tubing and collects in a 1300-gallon concrete underground holding tank! Now, that’s one big rain barrel!

It hasn’t rained here since they installed it, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we get that storm later today. For so many reasons, both small — and big!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Tools, gloves, rain barrels + more. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.