Tag Archives: silicone

Rain Barrel

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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