Rain Water Catchment Barrel

Since it rains so much in the Houston area, I figured it would be nice to store some rain water for those times when there's a break in the rain and my plants and garden need water.  There is a ton of ideas for this sort of thing online, but all of them are just a bunch of barrels just sitting in the yard.  They look ridiculous.  So, I wanted something that looks purposeful and little rustic.  I thought what better than an old water tower look.

I started by making the stand.  All of the wood from this project is from reclaimed pallets from junk piles.  They're a pain to pull apart, but you get free heat-treated wood that looks very rustic. I even tried to use the nails that I saved from the pallet boards to assemble the stand.  I reserved about 25 slats from the pallets for the walls of the water tower for later.

These 55 gallon barrels can be found on craigslist pretty cheap, almost anywhere.  First I drilled holes on the top and bottom to put the bulkheads for the spigot and the overflow.  I used some 3/4" PVC for the spigot fitting and the overflow.  I also drilled some holes on the elbow for the overflow to act as a siphon break and to allow for more free flowing water.  I learned this from plumbing overflows on my aquariums.  After the barrel was plumbed, I worked on where it connects to the roof.

I used some standard 2" PVC fittings to make the intake part of the system (the black thing in the pictures).  Sites online say that there are PVC fittings that screw directly into these barrels but I couldn't find any.  The one I used just sits in the hole on the top of the barrel.  The PVC contraption is supposed to trap gravel and junk from the roof.  I got the idea from someone online and Im not sure how well it works to be honest.  It should probably be longer to be more effective. The gutter was taken from another part of my house that doesn't really need one.  I used some wire mesh on the top to catch leaves and larger debris from entering the system.  All of the plumbing between the roof and the barrel is simply dry fitting, nothing is really attached.  Makes for easy cleaning.

After the barrel was lifted on to the stand I tested it out before adding the wood slats.  The barrel completely fills with water after about 1.5" of rain - and that is with two competing gutter drains near the barrel (you can see one in the pic).  The overflow system also works surprisingly well.

For the wood slats, found an article about how to dress up barrels online from Texas A&M and used that as my guide.  Here is the link: https://dallas.tamu.edu/media/69254/covering-your-rain-barrel-wood-slats-2013.pdf  I first used some bungee cords and wrapped them around the barrel.  Then I used some construction adhesive and  added two blobs to the barrel and put the slat right over that.  I continued until I went all the way around, then cut the last piece to fit.

After I let that dry for a couple days, I added the metal strap.  I found this attached to one of the pallets in the junk pile.  There was just enough to go around the water tower twice.  I pre-drilled some holes in the strap and then screwed it on to the water tower for aesthetics.

Total cost of this project was about $40 which includes the barrel, adhesive, and some PVC fittings.