Wooden barrels must always have water in them to keep the wood swollen. They don’t make the best containers for freezing weather locations as the ice forms inside the barrel. Many rain barrels were cut open to allow the rain to fall into the barrel. The average homeowner does not have livestock that would drink out of one or consume the insects that may take up residence and breeding in an open water source. While they are pretty they are over 200 pounds dry weight. Add water at eight pounds per gallon and they can get very heavy. That is a lot of concentrated weight to have to stabilize. Then there is the issue of functionality. Many designs do not account for the volume of excess water to be safely redirected after the barrel fills up. Nor do they address the draining of this very heavy wooden barrel. If a hose connector is placed several inches above the bottom of the barrel at some point the solutes (pollution, bird waste, pollen) drop to the bottom of the barrel. The weight of the barrel is such that tipping it over to get that sludge out is nearly impossible.
Plastic is easier and less expensive to form into a shape that is water tight. There are a couple of ways to create a shape in plastic. Blow molding is how milk gallon jugs are made. The mold that the plastic is formed with is very expensive but allows for a high volume of thin walled containers. Rain barrels are now being produced using this type of molding process. One should keep in mind the temperature variations that the plastic will be subjected to. Thin walled plastics do not usually hold up well over a long period of time either. These rain barrels are usually priced less then a comparable sized unit made from the rotomolding process.
Rotomolding of plastic is a common manufacturing method for rain barrels. The walls are usually thicker allowing for more stability of the shape. Weather extremes can be less of a stressor for the plastic compared to a thin walled blow molded rain barrels. Rotomolded rain barrels can have a UV inhibitor include, increasing life expectancy. Some plastics are formulated with a percentage of recycled material. If they are, then that barrel should not be considered for storage of potable water.
Rain barrels are usually designed as a ‘gravity flow’ based system. Without pumps to move the water the barrel needs to be elevated. Water does not run uphill worth a darn so be selective of where you place the rain barrel in relation to where you are going to use the water.
Here is the basic math you’ll need to calculate the volume of water headed to the rain barrel: one inch of rainfall falling on a 12” x 12” surface will create about one half gallon of water. The volume of water to be captured can be staggering. So will your rain barrel ever fill up? In many cases it will faster than you would like. Now what happens? You need to review how the overflow is designed for the rain barrel. If you have a large volume of water exiting the downspout do you really think it will be able to exit out of a garden hose? Is the barrel a dark color? To reduce algae growth the barrel should be a dark color ( or painted a dark color ) Where does the garden hose attach? The higher the hose attachment is placed on the barrel the more residual water will remain. Some might think this is a good idea and refer to it as ballast. The reality is that the water will be replaced with pollen and other debris that sinks to the bottom of the barrel. At some point you may notice that your barrel stinks. This is due to the microbes consuming the oxygen in the water as they digest the pollen and other ‘stuff’ in the barrel. Look for a barrel design that discharges the water from the lowest point on the barrel. An added benefit of a lower discharge point is greater water pressure and evacuating more water from the barrel.
So when you are looking for a rain barrel the features to look for are:
Location and size of overflow port
Location of the garden hose attachment
How thick the walls of the barrel are
All of these features can found on www.Aquabarrel.com rain barrels
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