Rain Barrel

Elliott and I are always looking for ways to save money in the disguise of saving the environment so the idea of putting in a rain barrel at our house really appealed to us. I read a lot about it on my favorite house blog, younghouselove.com. They were able to get a discounted barrel through a local government program so I decided to see if there was something similar in Columbus. There was! The Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District offers several communities in the Columbus area rain barrels for $50 if you register your house and either attend a workshop or take a quiz online. I looked at a couple companies that sell rain barrels in the area as well as home depot and they usually ran around $100. So this sounded like a great deal to me!

First I had to sign up for the GreenSpot and watch a presentation about why getting a rain barrel is important and how it works.  Then I had to pass a quiz to qualify for the discounted rain barrel.

A couple weeks later Elliott stopped by the office and picked up our 60 gallon rain barrel.  It's huge!

Then Elliott put it together and installed it on the side of the house.

In order for us to be able to use the bottom spout for a garden hose we have to raise the rain barrel up off of the ground to create some water pressure.  We reused some of the cinder blocks that we had in the basement to create a base.  Then Elliott spray painted them a similar color to the rain barrel to help them blend in. 

And we got our first rain since the barrel was installed this weekend.  Our barrel is half full now!