My big rain barrel isn't so big after all

A few months ago I decided we have the perfect spot for a rain barrel. The downspout on the northeast corner of our house emptied beneath the steps from our deck. An additional deck will be built at that corner of the house, so a rain barrel in this spot will be hidden. And that gave me the idea of having several rain barrels linked together. Then my husband Jerry suggested using one of those white 250 gallon tanks that have a metal cage around them. What a great idea! That ought to take all spring to fill up. So he bought the tank and I started digging.

Here's a photo of the space we wanted to use. It's pretty much a mess. Whenever it rains water collects at the bottom of the steps. And the brick retaining wall is falling apart. After measuring the area, I figured that with a little digging the large tank would fit perfectly. The tank measures approximately 4' tall, 4' long and 3' wide. It comes equipped with a large opening in the top and a 2" ball valve at the bottom. I decided to position the tank so that the valve at the bottom of the tank would be accessible when standing by the retaining wall at the bottom of the steps.

So my first task is removing the crumbling brick.

In this photo taken last fall when we moved in, you can see there are several hostas that grow in this space, hiding a lot of the problems. They were beautiful. So before I did anything else I removed the hostas from under the deck stairs and set them aside for replanting later.

I used a small sledge hammer to break up the brick. I dumped the broken bricks and mortar in the space that has yet to be back-filled around the foundation of the sunroom, and I salvaged all bricks that weren't broken.


I decided to use red Windsor wall block to rebuild the retaining wall. After removing the bricks I found a small concrete footing that I couldn't remove. So I decided to place the blocks just outside the concrete footing. To accommodate the little lip on the bottom of the wall block, I cut a channel in the blacktop of our driveway. Using a masonary bit, I drilled holes about 3/8" deep. Then with masonary chisel and hammer I chipped out the channel. Once that was done stacking the blocks was easy. But it took me a whole weekend.

To make a space for the tank to sit just west of the stairs, I needed to dig into the dirt along the north wall of the house. I wanted to make sure the tank was level. So the next weekend I build an additional retaining wall and created a gravel floor where the tank could sit.

And, voilá! With Jerry giving me a hand to move the tank in place, the rain barrel was installed. We cut the downspout to end about a foot above the top of the tank. We attached a flexible, expandable downspout we bought at Home Depot to the downspout to direct water to the opening in the top of the tank. A 12"X12" piece of window screen was placed over the opening to catch leaves. It was attached with a large gear-drive hose clamp and the flexible downspout was attached with a wire.

The best part was the drenching downpour we had the following morning. We got about 2" of rain that day. It only took about 30 minutes to fill the tank to over flowing. That's 250 gallons in half an hour! So I guess it wasn't going to take the entire spring to fill it up after all. Jerry and I quickly decided that we could probably use two more. Luckily there won't be any retaining walls to rebuild where we install the other two :-)

Oh, and today Jerry, again being the fabulously handy guy he is, installed fittings and a spigot to which I connected my garden hose. And I watered for free! Of course, it's different than the pressurized water from my house - a lot slower. But it works and it's free, did I say that?