Johnston County Mandatory Water Conservation

I put in a 50 gallon barrel to catch rain water last year.

I think I'm going to put in another one and get a small pump so I can water the garden easier.

 

Kaci... we didn't do anything special to ours last fall.. just let them die back .. and in the last few weeks the Gigantic one is coming up, the Black Magic is sending shoots every-which-way, Illustrium is up in a few places, Craig has 2 new ones planted, and then the dwarf green one is up, but just 2 little ears so far. :mrgreen:

 

So where did you get it and appx. how much did it cost?

 

I got the "out at the curb" discount. Somebody was throwing it out on Lombard and I picked it up. Pretty nice barrel. Really thick white plastic. I used to see them for sale by a guy in Red Oak. I think they were around $20-$30. I'm sure there's got to be someplace around in Raleigh you can get them.

I just use a siphon/siphon pump to get the water out now. I priced the pumps at Lowe's and for the electric one it was $88 and they had a much smaller one that you could run with an electric drill for $6.94



But here's a place in Raleigh:
http://www.rainwatersolutions.com/

Also the podcast, Blue Collar Gardener, had a recent episode about this.

 

I would be very cautious about using 55 Gallon Drums unless you know what the previous contents of that drum were.

 

you could try agri-supply or tractor supply.

Agri has these though they aren't exactly a barrel


http://www.agrisupplyco.com/cgi-bin/cgiitmls?m=ThisP&p=39392.000000&l=1



That one is 37 gallon and they come all the way up to 180 gallon.



Craig

 

They also make a diverter that attaches to the downspout to fill the barrels and then resume as a downspout when the barrels are full. I put in two in this house and three in the last house for watering flowers and the like. As Hught pointed out you need to get barrels that are food quality if you are going to ever use the water for anything because you can contaminate a lot of stuff including yourself.

 

This drum had already seen some action so I figured it was pretty safe. Plus, all those years working as a chemist helped. Plus, I didn't use any water out of it for the first six months.

I think plants are hardier than we give them credit for. I've got some fescue growing in a puddle of oil in my engine oil container.

 

Now that is funny:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

Rain Barrel workshop

http://johnston.ces.ncsu.edu/content/rbworkshop

 

Awesome! Thanks ncmom.

 

For anyone interested, The Town of Cary also sells 65 gallon rain barrels for $85. Takes just 10 minutes to set up, and you can connect more than one together if you like. We got one a few weeks back and after just a few light rainfalls, the barrel is full, so we are thinking of getting another.

I'm pretty sure that this is the barrel I have (the black one at the top), although it's more expensive here than if you get it from the Town of Cary.

http://www.rainwatersolutions.com/rainbarrels.html

 

FYI, Stephen's Ace Hardware in Fuquay sells rain barrels. http://www.stephensfv.com/

We don't have gutters so I don't think one would do us any good. :neutral: