City of Oklahoma City Water Conservation, 7 Jul 2010

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From YouTube: Constructing a Rain Barrel - Part 1

Description

Oklahoma Gardening's Kim Rebek talks with OSU Extension stormwater specialist Jason Vogel about how to construct a rainwater barrel at home.

A

Today, I'm joined by Jason Vogel's, our stormwater extension specialist and we're going to install a rain barrel. Jason welcome to Oklahoma gardening nice to see you now, of course, there's a variety of commercially available rain barrels, but we're going to build a do-it-yourself version. What do we need to get started unless what are the materials we're going to use so.

B

First off you need your barrel, this particular barrel. We have we bought it at farm supply, store, it's an olive oil. You can use different food grade barrels or chemical barrels things like pool pool chemicals. Things like that. We also have various PVC pipe. We have a PVC pipe here with the cap, some vinyl tubing, some various tees and overflow pipe and then our spitting and some other supplies for us to hook the pipes together. These.

A

Are all really easy to find from the hardware store exactly.

B

So you can get everything that we have here from your local hardware: store our farm supply store, okay,.

A

Excellent well before we start working on our rainbow, how would you sighs a barrel for the home setting so.

B

A rain barrel in general isn't enough water to water. Your lawn consistently so generally, the rain barrel is sized by how big you want to have it beside your house. um You can, you can either get water for your drink watering can or else you can water, a small area next to the rain barrel, with drip irrigation. So.

A

We're somewhat limited by aesthetics and as we'll see when we start putting ours in today, we're limited by space as to where we're going to put the barrel. Now before we get the barrel and salt, we need to have a firm foundation for it to sit on exactly.

B

So a barrel like this is 55 gallons. This is going to weigh almost 400 pounds so.

A

B

Need to have a firm foundation you're going to you're going to have it be getting a little bit wet underneath it by by nature, because it's dealing with an area whether it's a gutter. So this is going to weigh over 400 pounds. We need a firm foundation and we also need to get it high enough to either fit our watering can underneath or high enough to have enough pressure on the water so that the water will be forced through your drip, irrigation tubing and.

A

The higher it is off the ground, the more pressure will be built up to.

B

Make that way, and then the farther that you can move water along your drew irrigation to okay.

A

We're going to start putting this one together and we want to start from the bottom and move our way up right. Exactly.

B

So the first thing we're going to do is attach the spigot, this particular rain barrel. We bought and it was tree pre-drilled, but if you buy one or get one donate it to you, that is not pre-drilled. You can either just drill your hole and seal. It really good with some old rings or you can take your tap and die and put your threads on to it. So.

A

B

One right here has the threads in it. We're going to attach our spigot put our ring on the inside and then attach it with this pipe connector. Okay,.

A

And you want to make sure that it's a real, secure fitting, because every time you turn this on and off you're putting a bit of pressure on there. So we want it nice and secure.

A

Our spigots in place and when you were talking about materials for the rain barrel, something to point out is this one: has a nice big opening which made it easy for us to get inside and work with installing that spigot exactly.

B

And later on, it'll make it easier for you to get in there and maintain it clean it out. Right, ok,.

A

So, what's the next step, we need to do so.

B

The next thing we need to do is get away for the water to get into our rain barrel, so we have a one and a half inch inlet tube, so we drilled a hole that was.

A

B

Slightly larger than one and a half inches so that so that we can put that tubing into that hole and the water can get into the rain barrel. Ok,.

A

So right now our rain barrel we're going to set that aside, because there's a few other things we need to do as we get ready. What's the next step here so.

B

Next, we're going to build what we call our first flush, diverter and.

A

What does that do so.

B

Our first blush diverter basically collects the water that is the first water to come off the roof, and it's washing all of the dust, the bird droppings, the other things that have settled on to the roof. Since the last rainfall. Ok,.

A

And no, those will collect before the rest of the water goes into the rain barrel.

B

Yep, so it's going to collect here in our in our tube, which this is a bottom of our first flush. Diverter is simply a PVC tube that we've painted PVC pipe that we have painted, and we have a cap on the bottom that we've drilled a small hole into and we're going to put a small tube onto that and the water will slowly drain out of this first flush diverter after the rain stops and we'll divert that away from our foundation. Okay,.

A

So now we need to connect our water tubing to the top of this correct yep.

B

So we're going to take a tee and we'll attach this right to the top of our first flush. Diverter.

A

Okay, I have the intake, so this is that intake tube that we were looking at that goes into the top of our rain barrel, so the water once it fills up here, it's going to flow down into our rain barrel into.

B

Our Inlet tube and into the rain barrel, okay,.

A

B

Once the rain barrel gets completely full the rain barrels full, the water will come out this Inlet tube and then continue to fill up our PVC pipe. And then we have another tube here that we're going to put an overflow tube on, because it's going to rain a lot more than 55 gallons on to your on.

A

To your rooftop, so we have.

B

To be able to do something with the rest of that water, so here we have a PVC T, a couple connectors and an adaptor up on the top, and this into this we're going to put a 2-inch overflow pipe, and this too is overflow. Pipe onto the end of this will attach a flexible hose that we will want to once again run away from our foundation so that we don't have water on our foundation. Okay,.

A

And this one's larger than our water intake is there a reason for that? Yes,.

B

Because you have to be able to have this to handle all of the water that is coming through your gutter, ok, so this tube is larger. This doesn't necessarily have to do this. Dis just have to convey water into our rain barrel. Ok,.

A

And we have one more patient to grab that and tell us what that's for bet.

B

So this is an adapter that goes from our PVC tubing onto our gutter. We simply bought this at the hardware store and you just slip that into there. This adapter that we have is the adapter from our thick-walled PVC to our thinner, walled, adapter, PVC, tubing and.

A

Then there's this part comes in different sizes to attach two different size scattering as well. That's.

B

Correct: okay,.

A

Well, let's start to install this.