Advice on Rain Barrels?
I’m considering diverting water from my roof gutter’s down spout into a rain barrel, since the drain outside my garden door (which is connected to a pipe running under the house to the street and then into the city’s sewer system) regularly overflows (such as during Tuesday’s heavy rain storm), causing flooding in my basement….
I’m considering diverting water from my roof gutter’s down spout into a rain barrel, since the drain outside my garden door (which is connected to a pipe running under the house to the street and then into the city’s sewer system) regularly overflows (such as during Tuesday’s heavy rain storm), causing flooding in my basement.
Has anyone tried this? If so, any tips? Thanks!!
mshook: Thanks so much for sharing your experience! I’m definitely going to try this.
Rain Barrels for watering plants are good ideas. Gardener’s Supply has lots and offer diverters that fit into aluminum type downspouts so when the barrel is full the rest goes through the downspout.
http://bk.ly/sSs
FWIW – I believe we have 2 60 gallon barrels. Bought them on line, about $90 each, just bog standard black plastic. Our roller composter makes us tea, DIBS. And I think the dog would like nothing better than to be showered in compost!
For those of you who do have a rain barrel, if you only use it to water your plants (as opposed to playing with the dog) you should make a compost “tea” in it. Bag a bunch of compost in a cloth and hang it inside the barrel and let it steep into the water. the result will be a really great fertilizer for the plants.
I’m having someone come in to snake the sewer drain, so hopefully that will take care of any blockage (though there is always back-up from city sewer pipes during heavy rain, as discussed in detail in another thread; that’s a larger problem that I can’t really address). A drywell sounds like major construction work — more than I’m willing to take on. I may still do the rain barrel for use in the garden, and as tybur6 suggested, it was never meant to contain *all* of the gutter run-off, just a means to divert some of it.
Luvadaborsch, thanks for the link to rainwaterhog.com. I’d seen these tanks pictured elsewhere, but didn’t know where to buy them. I think a couple of these will be perfect. Thanks!
Thanks to all for your helpful input!
We had the exact same problem (water backing up in our laundry sink resulting in flooded cellar), and solved it with rain barrels. We have 2 roofs – the main part of the (small) house, and a longer garage/extension – so presumably we have quite a bit of water coming off of them. We did one barrel and then added a second last year. We capped off the drain that leads through the house, and not once has our cellar flooded again. I agree that it possibly could be a blockage in that pipe somwhere, but we live in Red Hook, very near the water, the next intersection up floods every time there is heavy rain… so we figured it was more to do with the storm system just not being able to cope. Very occasionally, with a heavy rain, the barrels will fill. We have an overflow hose from the back up barrel and goes out into the far side of the yard. The yard does not flood, no damage to ours or our neighbor’s property. We use the collected rain water to water the plants, play with the dog, etc. This past summer the barrels were both empty 2 weeks ago so we badly needed this rain. I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a try – good for your water bill, good for the city system!
I installed a 55 gallon rain barrel in my yard to collect water from the garden. I only attached it to the downspout for a small shed roof, about 90 sf, and it filled to the top during the rainstorm the other day. That storm would have collected about 700 gallons from my main roof. THe only use for a rain barrel is to water plants. Other than that, you have to deal with your sewer pipe to get rid of all that water.
I’m not sure what the requirements for smaller buildings is, but gutters in multi-unit buildings have to tie into the sewer. Outside NYC we always used any way we could to direct water away from the house and that helped alot with water problems in heavy downpours.
Everyone’s right about a rain barrel just not being big enough to take in all the rain from a roof, but they are great for watering. A couple of years ago I got one made from an old olive barrel. It’s got a screw on top with a double screen, three overflow/series linking ports at the top of the sides, and a littly facet near the bottom. There’s someting really nice about watering plants with the sun-warmed water. As for mosquitos, a friend from Inda told me I didn’t need to worry if I just stirred it with a stick once a day, but for now the screening works just fine
I have a 20′ x 50′ building and my sewer pipe handles it fine. You have either one of two problems, or both:
1. Your soil pipe is not large enough
2. there’s some blockage.
There have been numerous recommendations on here, under Plumbers, to have the pipe visually inspected out to the main sewer and to have it cleaned and/or replaced.