by Joe Laur
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OK, so it's not a genius transformation. Making a rain barrel out of a '57 Chevy muffler, or a handful of wet straw, now that's creative!

But a barrel was what I had, and plenty of rain. This was a great reuse project anyway. The barrels I found were 55 gallon HDPE drums used to ship peppers, olives, and pickled vegetables (giardineira) all the way from Greece. I needed, not only a couple of rain barrels, but barrels to store maple sap during sugaring season. So whatever your need for a rain barrel, sap storage, beer making, start with a barrel. It's easier. You can find them at food processors, local pickle factories, and institutional food producers and so on. Use Craigslist, for gosh sakes. There are barrels out there, just waiting for you to find and take them home!

You can see from the label on the cover that my barrels are authentic Greek ones. Or at least the contents were Greek. I myself am not Greek, but I love feta cheese and those olives!

After you've got your barrels, go to the hardware store and buy a ½ inch boiler drain for each rain barrel you want to make. While you're there, pick up a couple of big washers to hold each drain in place, a hose washer to make it watertight, and a nut to secure it all. Plus that really neat variable speed rechargeable cordless drill you've been coveting. Tell your spouse it's for the project (or the blog you're writing about the project), even if it isn't. You can never have too many tools.

Using your nifty new drill (with your name on it) and a ¾ inch spade style drill bit, drill a hole in the barrel. If you don't have a ¾ inch spade style bit, go back to the hardware store and pick one up, plus the next power tool on your list. It's for the blog, right? Pick a flat spot in the barrel if you've got one; if not, just do your best, when you tighten it all up, it'll flatten out anyway. Sort of. Good enough for a rain barrel.

Once the hole is drilled, slip the first flat washer over the threaded part of the boiler drain and insert it into the barrel, near the bottom, pointing toward the bottom of the barrel. It should look like this:

Then put the hose washer - that rubber thing - over the threaded part of the drain on the inside of the barrel. After you’ve put the hose washer over the threaded part of the boiler drain, slip the second flat washer over that, then secure the whole thing with the flat nut. I used the kind of aluminum nut that they use to secure electrical conduit, but a flat brass nut would do as well. I can't show you this part because it's too dark and tight inside the barrel to take a picture, but trust me, here's the order: boiler drain, flat washer, barrel wall, hose washer, second flat washer, nut. Tighten the nut until the hose washer squishes nice and flat against the barrel wall. If you want to be really sure about waterproofing, or you couldn't find a flat spot on your barrel, add a little silicone caulk between the washers and the barrel wall. Ignore spouse comment about "scraping the bottom of the barrel."

When you're all done, extract yourself from the barrel, make a note to lose 10 pounds before next year so the barrel is not so hard to get out of next time, and stand it up. My barrels have a ring that holds the cover in place, so I can leave the cover off, and put a screen in place to keep leaves out of the barrel. As well as small suicidal mammals who can't swim and end up all gross and floaty in your nice clean rainwater. If your cover is solid, you can just cut a hole in the top and cover it with screening. Put the barrel where you'll catch rain, (like at the end of the gutter, Einstein) and you've got a nice barrel to catch and hold precious pure water, and a neat spigot on the bottom to which you can attach your garden hose for letting it back out again, right where it's needed most.

If you're like me, you'll want to label your barrels "rain" and "sap" or "beer" or whatever else you might put in them. I hate to get my sap and beer mixed up. Labeling one barrel "Hiding place after my spouse finds out how much money I spent at the hardware store" is another option. Then sit back, and let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

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