Rain barrels: What's hype, and what's helpful

Updated November 4, 2013:  See Part 2 of this post.  I do not recommend the rain barrel shown in the original post below.

Updated June 8, 2014:  See also Part 3 of this post, which describes a brand new type of rain barrel failure.  I have yet to find a reliable rain barrel that will last long enough to at least pay for its own cost.

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The topics of rain, drought, and water conservation are everywhere in the local news these days.


Screengrabbed from
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/
on April 14, 2011 

In a previous post, I summarized some general information about Texas water resources and League City's management of our potable supply. 
In a follow-up post, I commented on the great gnashing of political teeth that is occurring because our water billing rates are necessarily increasing as the City enacts new conservation measures. 

I also mentioned the City's pending WaterSmart Park, a passive water-conservation educational foray about which little information is yet available. 

Screengrabbed from
 http://www.leaguecity.com/index.aspx?NID=1534

A few days ago, there was yet another article in the Galveston County Daily News about our current water shortages.  That article described the acute and nonrefundable financial outlays those shortages are forcing some local municipalities to make in order to secure their water supplies. 

And a few days prior to that, SciGuy described how 86% of Texas, including Harris County, is now in severe drought - and it's only April (we normally have droughts and supply challenges only at the height of summer). 

So you get the picture, and it ain't exactly a wet one.  The odd fact of the matter is, however, that greater Houston and its affiliate municipalities do not have a water supply problem.  What they do have is a water capture, storage, treatment, and distribution problem.  The upper Texas coast is subtropical and correspondingly wet:  we receive an average annual rainfall of about 48 inches.  What that means is about a quarter of a million gallons of rain fall upon the average Centerpointe residential lot each year, which is WAY more water than we could productively use!

But of course, we don't avail ourselves of that water.  Most of it runs off and then infiltrates into (or evaporates from) those two massive dry-bottom ponds at the northeast corner of the neighborhood, and I bet a lot of you didn't know that we, the neighborhood, collectively own those two ponds (per statements made during the March POA Board meeting).

Thing 1 and Thing 2, flanking Walker Street.

But what if we WANTED to use some of that water??  Makes sense, does it not?  Here we have all this political anguish and personal expense associated with a commodity that we don't seem to be managing very well and which appears to be increasingly scarce, and yet at the same time we personally have spent (in the form of higher real estate prices) a small fortune trying to get rid of it!  The whole situation seems rather bo-bo-bo-bonkers. 

Rain barrels are increasingly promoted by municipalities and special interest groups as a water conservation measure - a way of capturing and putting to use some of the rain water that is normally disposed of by engineering design. 

My current model is a Systern, which is a relatively expensive choice, but I'm sorry - I'm not going to build a semi-custom house only to outfit it with an ugly rain barrel.  This one is the exact right shade of beige to coordinate with the brick, and oh, it has that compelling cherry-red tap, analogous to the coveted signature red knobs on those two thousand dollar Wolf brand gas ranges.
:-) 

Unfortunately, as is often the case with "green" initiatives, some of the assertions regarding rain barrels are mostly hype.  Google "rain barrel" and you'll find peddlers asserting that their use "can dramatically lower your water bill!!" or "minimize your eco-impact" or similar language.   Well, do the math on that little gem:  League City's potable water consumption is currently running at about 128 gallons per capita per day (gpcd).  The average family uses about 60,000 gallons of water per year.  A consumer-grade rain barrel is generally 35 to 85 gallons in size.  How many of those would you need to run through in order to make a meaningful dent in 60,000 gallons??

Right. 

However, there ARE a couple of surprising benefits to using a rain barrel, and therein lie my personal observations and recommendations:

(1) Using a rain barrel can be easier than using a hose.   If I'm spot-watering landscape and patio plants with a hose, I must unwind it, drag the danged thing across the yard, deal with the inevitable kinks, and then wind it back up again when I'm done.  If I leave the garden hose lying on the lawn, it looks unsightly, gets chewed by our dog, and then gets piled in a knotted heap by the lawn contractor, a heap that I must later untangle (which infuriates me). 

In contrast, if I want to spot-water plants using a rain barrel, all I need to do is get a couple of two-gallon buckets, and I can schlep water around my yard so fast it would make your head spin.  It's a MUCH more efficient process; my task is done in a fraction of the time.

I don't use the Systern exactly the way it was designed.  The top fits on snugly and comes with attachment screws, but I pop it off so I can do my own bucket brigade.
CORRESPONDING RECOMMENDATIONS: 
(a) You don't necessarily need one of these things with a tap on the bottom, no matter how cherry red and cute the tap looks.  The taps are simply too small to be of efficient use on a 55-gallon rain barrel.  And they make the barrels more expensive.
(b) You might not want to get one of these things unless it's the type where you can remove the top and use it this way.  You need a mosquito-proof top of some kind, AND you need to guard against small children messing with these things (see point #3 below).  Some of the smaller rain barrel models have narrow goose-neck tops or sealed tops.  Those would not be useful to me personally. 

(2) Most consumer-grade rain barrels will pay for themselves if used regularly.  They may not lower your water bill by a significant amount, but if you do the math (remembering that we must pay sewer charges on most of our water consumption), you'll find that even the relatively expensive ones can at least pay for themselves inside several years.  Therefore, it's effectively no cost to you, and you can choose one that facilitates the convenient bucket-brigade option if that suits your lifestyle. 

(3) Rain barrels are a good introduction to conservation mandates that will eventually influence water consumption.  They teach people to be mindful of the fact that potable water is not an infinite resource.  They can be engaging for children to use, if managed properly:


Photo from http://www.wikipedia.com/ / Copyleft.

Kids would probably be better off using a bottom tap instead of accessing them from the top. Remember, if unsecured and mis-used, a rain barrel (along with every other bucket-like, pond-like and pool-like consumer item sold in America today) could pose a drowning hazard to small children. 

(4) Rain barrels can help store water for emergency use.  I have friends who have gotten them specifically because they think it's more convenient than storing water in a bath tub during a tropical storm or hurricane (rainwater is not potable, but really, neither will tap water remain uncontaminated if stored in an open-air location such as a bath tub for days at a time). 

(5) Future generations of consumer rain barrels may, indeed, evolve to the point where they do offer the potential for significant reductions in municipal consumption and financial savings to certain consumers.  As a gardener, I'm positively jonesing for a more substantial set-up like this one:

OK - NOW we're talking about some serious water storage and management capability.  This 300-gallon tank is sleek, minimally obtrusive, and tall enough so that it will produce good delivery pressure at the bottom tap.  This was installed by blogger and gardener Erin Covert of Dallas, who, like myself, was fed up with constantly dragging garden hoses across her yard. 

(6) Effective rain barrels don't need to be expensive.  If you are not concerned with chic, and if you have appropriately secured your rain collection space against unauthorized access by children and pets, you have the option to use available materials to make yourself an inexpensive system.  On that note, I will leave you with a neat YouTube video showing one such option: