Got these old ice cream tubs from a local ice cream place. $1 for a dozen. I wanted to increase my rainwater storage (currently have 2 rainbarrels). Realized I could stack these guys up as much as I needed. A few drilled holes and a spout off a cracked kombucha kit and bam. Homemade rainbarrel.
This is part of a set of daisey-chained barrels so I had to keep it to 3 tubs for height reasons. All told it only adds about 8 more gallons of storage but every bit helps. You could stack as many as you wanted though, within reason.
I kept it simple but you could also add additional sealing between the bottom-lid connection to limit loss that way. I will add a few extra pictures in the comments.
Additional pictures so you can see what I did. Its dead simple though.
One thing I forgot to add! You need at least some waterproof caulking where the lid meets the bottom of the next barrel to keep it sealed! Very important step.
Not trying to be an asshole here, but why?
What do you use the water for?
Is it worth the extra effort?
Does it save that much money?
Its for watering my garden. I water primarily with rainwater. Otherwise I have to lug my watercan to the spigot on the otherside of the house. For me, rainbarrels are a godsend. I have two 55 gallon ones in conjuction with this one.
As for effort, this took me 20 minutes to assemble. Not hard or time consuming.
For me its not about money, its about increasing my rainwater storage using what I had lying around.
We usually get hot dry summers and I have a well. Any water saved from the ground is important.
Ah very cool! I get it now. Thanks!
Not the OP so can’t say why they’re doing it, but in the UK at least it’s really common practice for people who grow gardens because we’ll frequently have “hosepipe bans” which means we can’t hook our hoses up to the mains to water our gardens. So, you either have stored rainwater (like OP is doing) or… a very dry crispy garden.
I don’t know how much it saves money wise, but ecologically using water from rain instead of the mains offsets the amount of water that needs to come out of treatment plants. After all, plants don’t care about water treatment really. So they don’t need the fancy drinkable tap water. They can have rainwater and that means more for the humans.
Thanks for the insights, didn’t know about UK hosepipes bans.
Not Op, but another reason why some people might collect rainwater is that the tap water where they live is way to hard. The mineral content is very high and for example most houseplants cannot survive on it on the long-term. My dad also used rainwater for his aquarium fish.
Yes, there are ways to filter it and make it softer, but it’s just way easier to just collect and store some rainwater.
Radical! I need to remember this for my garden. Finding a large water container is so difficult on a budget. But if I can make one, that’s cheaper and saves something going to landfill. hmm…
For sure! You could probably do it with old 10 gallon buckets as long as they stack. Same principle. Then all you need is a bit of waterproof sealant and a spigot.
Nice recycling. You might want to paint/wrap them in something opaque before they become algae central!
Good idea!
How do you collect water?
So my rainbarrels are daisy-chained. My primary rainbarrel (storebought) is fed directly through a little port attached to the downspout on my garage. The overflow is attached via a tube that feeds my secondary rain barrel (homemade from a plastic 55 gallon drum). What I did here is take another plastic tube from my secondary rainbarrel’s overflow and fed it through a hole on the lid of the top ice cream tub in this setup.
So for me, its an overflow barrel for my overflow barrel. Each barrel has to be slightly lower than the last so gravity can feed it from one to the other, hence why I could only stack three ice cream tubs for my setup.
If you were to make this yourself, you would want to cut a hole in the top lid large enough to feed your downspout into. Then you could add as many tubs as you wanted to get the capacity you want.
Quick question: How much water does this provide? Can you fully water your garden with this? And also: Is a good rain day able to fully refill it?
Trying to get some realistic estimates about what to expect from rain collection, and I find this idea pretty cool!
So this is 3 of these stacked up together. Each is 11.4 liters. All that equates to about 9 gallons. Thats enough to water my gardens probably 1.5 times. I have a lot of garden beds though. If you just had a small one you could do more.
My total setup is 116 gallons (but thats with two large rainbarrels too) which lasts me a long time.
A good rainstorm would fill this setup very quickly.
Are they sturdy? Water weighs a lot so it’s always good to be mindful of the forces that come into play
This setup is but its only three high. As you add more you would have to play it by ear.
As long you stay below 110 gallons, you should be fine legally.
There is no maximum here. I think thats a US thing.
Maybe some specific state, county or city, but definitely not a general rule in the US.
Most of the Western USA has some form of ordinance for it, but it applies to other arid parts of the world as well.
I’ve only ever lived in Oregon and Washington, in both those states its legal if you are just doing it off existing rooftops and using it on your property. I think, in both those states you could run into issues (or at least need a permit and water rights) if you build a system specifically for catching water.
I think Colorado is the only state with the 110gal rule.
Whats the logic?
The areas are fairly arid, to the point where the upstream cities could cut off water from downstream cities by just withholding enough. Therefore, water rights became a thing, with the order of rights going from oldest to newest.
Further agreements were made, like the Colorado River Compact, which negotiated minimum water supplies between the different American states and later included parts of Mexico.
Ah ok so the idea is if youre capturing it, it isnt running off into the river system. That does make sense.
Yeah, and the Colorado & Rio Grande rivers are at least river basins with negotiated agreements. Other parts of the world don’t have these agreements and these disagreements could cause wars in the near future.
It also goes into the ground, and catching the rain prevents it from refilling ground water reserves. The issue is some people (Nestlé) could effectively cause a water scarcity issue and sell the water they’re taking, when it should belong to everyone.
what is this limit you are talking of?
Storing rain water in significant quantities on your property is illegal in some parts of the world.
