Rain Barrels Installed

We didn't get to the store to price parts for more rain barrels yesterday and instead we got ours put into place.  Rain is coming!  But my mother ("hi Mom!") has a vehicle big enough for three barrels and she is headed to Omaha tomorrow so I hope to snag three of them tomorrow.

~How to set up rain barrels.~

You will need:

• Something to elevate the rain barrel. (We used two cinder blocks.)  Remember that a full barrel weighs 440 pounds and plan accordingly.
• A brick or rock to weight down the barrel so it doesn't blow away like an empty trash can
• A hack saw to cut your drainpipe
• Something to convey the water from the cut drainpipe to the opening of the water barrel
• zip ties (depending on the item above)
• screws (again, depending on how you are connecting the downspout to the opening of the water barrel)
• Someone to take pictures of you because you are cuter when you use tools

First, we set down some cinder blocks (free-left behind by the previous owner of our house).

Then we put a brick in the barrel.  (Also free b/c it was left behind by the previous homeowner.)
Next, The Magician cut the drainpipe with some kind of heavy-duty saw:

Then he measured and cut some drain-pipe extenders to size:

He attached the extender to the drain pipe with screws.

There are other materials that can be used for this (like regular drainpipe adapter thingys) but we just used what we had on hand.
Next we used zip ties to convince the of the the extender that it didn't want to let water from the roof go anywhere except into the water barrel:

One is looped through the grate and the other is looped around the extender and through the first one.
After clipping the ends of the zip ties for aesthetic reasons, we were done.

Here's what I get when I ask my husband to smile for the camera:

He's at work on the second barrel.  Here it is finished, along with a glimpse of some ground cover (purple round plants in the background) that suddenly burst into bloom this week:

Now we just need rain.....

Please post comments if you have any questions about how we did this. Thanks for reading!