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Bellingham Weather
4 Easy Steps to Rigging a Rain Barrel
Let’s face it: We’re not exactly living in a desert up here in the Fourth Corner. Average annual rainfall in Bellingham is nearly 3 FEET! So, if your house has 2000 square feet of roof area, each year your rain gutters are channeling over 43,636 gallons of the elixir of life straight into the ground.
Meanwhile, if you’re pulling public water from “the grid” or, as different pockets of Whatcom County tend to experience, running your low-volume well dry in the late summer months and taking delivery of a truckload of agua just so you can keep flushing your toilet, isn’t it worth looking into harvesting some of that ridiculously abundant and FREE resource from the clouds?
The answer is Yes, and the simplest method is to rig a rain barrel.
Rain barrels have been in use for thousands of years, and as sure as flat roofs should be outlawed in the PNW, rain barrels should be a code requirement. I mean, doesn’t it strike you as just the slightest bit odd that we drink and brush our teeth with the exact same water we wash our cars, sprinkle the lawn and hose off the garden tools with? Those outdoor jobs can be handled without turning on the household tap, which means the water meter won’t rack up the charges, and the well pump won’t kick on wasting electricity and draining the aquifer.
1) It’s simple: Start by getting an aesthetically nice wooden barrel, or a high-density plastic barrel, or a clean metal barrel, and roll it to the highest plausible corner of your home’s exterior.
2) Have the handiest friend you know install a hose bibb into the bottom inch or two of the barrel – this is your new “faucet.”
3) Then, have your friend route the rain gutter’s downspout into a nice-fitting hole in the top of the barrel, and add an over-flow drain near the top as well. (If you’re really cool, you can pipe the overflow into a SECOND rain barrel!)
4) Finally, level it all up, and voila! You’ve just “gone green!”
The next time it rains your barrel will be full before you can say “water conservation” and you’ll have your own personal cistern to draw from for as many household needs and chores as your imagination allows. Oh, and to keep the mosquito larvae and algae at bay, add a goldfish or three. Simplicity truly is genius!!!
For more information on rain barrels and their various designs and uses, visit www.rainbarrelguide.com.
