Tag Archives: faucet

Automatic Timer for Rain Barrel

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Since I had a rain barrel I wanted to add a little automation to it. The best time to water is early in the morning, before the sun has come up. of course, early in the morning I need to be off to work. To help me out I purchased an Automatic Water Timer and some soaker hose. After hooking it all up I was quite pleased with myself.
It took me a while to realize it, the automatic timer wasn’t working. It never actually came on. The problem was that I was testing it by hooking it to the house water line then, when it worked fine, I put it back on the barrel. Apparently (obviously now), there are two kinds of automatic timers. The kind that use the high pressure of city water lines to actuate and the kind I need for a gravity fed system.
When you get your own make sure it’s one that operates at 0 PSI, not just the kind that works with low pressure soaker hoses.
I ended up ordering a Solar Rain Barrel Timer online, which says it can operate at 0-80 psi. I couldn't find anything similar in any of my local hardware stores and this one seemed the best for the price.

Rain Barrel

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I was looking to find a rain barrel at a decent price, but it was proving difficult. I don't really want to pay $80-120.

This past Saturday I was playing paintball over at a friends house and happened upon a barrel in his woods. I brought it up to him and before I could ask he offered it to me.

There was some patching required, notably almost the entire base was cut out and in the top was missing its screw in plug.

To fix the missing plug I used a disc cut from a plastic paint can lid on each side and silicone gel to hold it all together. I filed in the whole gap with silicon, I'm not certain that was necessary.

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I also added a faucet. I filled the barrel up 1/4 of the way and all the seals on that end seem to be holding.

I will finish the rain barrel by covering the hole in the top with some mesh to keep out mosquitoes and other debris. I'll place the whole thing on a few blocks and after I install gutters I'll run the downspout into the barrel. I have a fairly large surface area on my roof so I should fill the barrel with less than an inch of rain.

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