turdacres

Ah date night at the acres! How I do love it. Of course, it’s not actually at night because we go to bed at 9 pm. But anyhow we do have a good time with our assorted projects. The rain barrel project has been ongoing all summer. We got some cool barrels aways back they were 15.00 a piece. And then the doode created an insanely beautiful set up for them. Check it out.

beautiful set up

plumbed together underneath

And the platform painted to match what will be our new house color to boot.

They were beautiful. And alas, there they sat being beautiful and not useful all summer long. Sigh.

We needed a new plan. The problem was upstairs. For most people putting up a rain barrel would have been complete with the barrel part. But we live in the kooky house with really terrible drainage problems. Our falling down flat roof garage was not really capable of getting the water to the drain spout. Instead it pooled in the sagging middle, or caused water damage along the eaves. And this was an extra problem since the garage not only drains its own flat roof pool, but it also accepts the runoff from one third of the house roof!

After long talks about how to fix the problem and install the rain barrel system, and one failed attempt to use flexible drainage pipes, we were kind of stalled out. I went to our favorite re-use place Construction Junction and bought them out of all the gutter and downspout they had. Three pieces, all different, 16.00.

And so we come to the date night part. We’ve been watching Food Jammers on tv, and admire their approach to designing newfangled crazy ways to cook stuff. These guys discuss and draw and then they just make it happen. We needed the same thing. Just get it done. What’s the harm in some crappy thing? We were almost there after all. So we got out all of our assorted bits and pieces and then we jammed stuff together, bits and bobs, and came up with this. It was pretty fun, and we didn’t argue as much as we usually do when we’re project-ing. We had a big rain storm heading our way and we wanted to be able to test something. Focus! Connect. And voila, here it is.

the run we needed. notice pool in middle of garage!

making the slope. doode made little supports out of scrap wood

i paid 10.00 for this brown downspout length notice the -just make it work- connections

this wabi sabi corner treatment is quite aesthetically pleasing!

We really had to work the design around this strange shaped piece of rusty brown downspout. We needed to use each piece we had to make it to the final destination.

this open part adds to the rube goldberg effect

and bingo we made it. I caulked the leaky corner with silver gutter caulk we had around.

Ok so now we’re golden upstairs. But we still needed to get the water into the barrels. Buoyed by our success upstairs we were set to tackle the downspout issue. We needed to get from square downspout on an angle to small round opening in top of barrel. We struggled to solve this one. And then a trip to the barn provided the answer–an old crystal water bottle that we’d cut the bottom out of so that I could use it as a little cloche for some plant or other in the spring.

you can watch the water shooting into the barrels

It was so awesome! We did it. And later when it poured for a few minutes the darn things filled right up. We kept going outside in the rain to check on things. Up on the roof, yep check it’s working. The barrels, yep it’s working. A teeny half inch of rain filled them both up. And then they overflowed–sigh we need to finish the overflow system. And we need to figure out the hose to garden part. I took it upon myself to test the flow and managed to soak my entire leg by mistake–dang we have pretty good pressure at the tank! Doode had a good laugh at that part.

Anyhow that’s how you make a rain barrel turdacres style.