In honor of earth day yesterday – use a rain barrel. Water your flowers with rainwater you store up for FREE. H2O is expensive.
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The price on rain barrels have come down a lot as well. You can generally buy a repurposed pickle barrel rain barrel for between $60-$80 off craigslist. The guy I bought them from made them as a side business and sells them online. I just bought two for $60 each last weekend . It rained last night and now they are full and ready.
Way to go Jason! I attended a class held by a non profit teaching people how to make their own rain barrels. It cost like $40 and we walked away with everything we needed. It was great. And municipal water costs are becoming insanely expensive so rain barrels pay themselves off very quickly.
I’m not totally dissing this idea, but remember that the water a rain barrel gathers is going to your yard anyway.
The barrel basically makes it possible to put the water exactly where you want it on your property, and keeps a certain amount of water (whatever goes in the barrel) from running OFF of your property.
I don’t see rain barrels as some great water saving device. That said, I will probably build one myself someday.
Hey Corbyn. You are right. Rain barrels don’t magically provide you with additional water. They do, however, provide you with water when you might not otherwise have it. For instance, it is set to rain consistently for the next two weeks where I live. I don’t really need every drop on my lawn or running off into another property right now. Storing some of that water up for a future dry spell is what makes water barrels awesome. Then you don’t have to pull out the hose and waste water that actually counts against your bill!