Re-roll out the barrel

For most of this gardening season, our rain barrel has been out of commission. When we first hauled it out of the shed in the spring, Brian found a problem with the spigot, so we couldn't use it until we acquired a new one. Then, while he was installing that, he discovered a bigger problem: the barrel itself had a big crack right down the bottom. He tried repairing this with polyurethane aquatic sealant, but that was completely useless; it fell out as soon as it dried. Then he tried a plastic repair epoxy putty from J.B. Weld, which molded nicely into the crack but didn't stick to the body of the barrel. Finally, he tried the regular J.B. Weld epoxy, applying it to both the inside and the outside of the barrel. That worked better than the other options, but it didn't hold for long. Once the rain barrel filled up, the crack partially reopened, draining off all the water above roughly the one-quarter mark.

So, having exhausted the "repair" option, it was time to move on to "replace." And that presented us with a new problem: what was the most ecofrugal choice for a new rain barrel?

I didn't really know how much it was reasonable to pay for a rain barrel, since we'd gotten ours for free from a friend who had an extra. I checked out the selection at The Home Depot and found that for the size we wanted—about 55 gallons—prices ranged from around $40 for collapsible models made of soft plastic to over $200 for fancy wood-look models with multiple spigots. The top-rated choice was a hefty industrial drum that cost $180, but based on the picture, we couldn't figure out how we'd hook it up to our downspout. And the top seller, a utilitarian plastic bin priced at $117, made me a little wary because it looked so similar to our old one, which had cracked after 9 years of use, even though we had diligently drained it and stowed it away every winter. I was hoping for something sturdier that would serve us for decades to come.

But after scrolling a little further, I hit on something that looked ideal: a 55-gallon model upcycled from an old food storage barrel. Priced at $100 and available in three colors, it was made from a sturdy HDPE plastic that, according to the listing, "can be left outdoors even in the winter months so there is no need to modify your downspouts in the Spring and Fall." That would save us time, free up storage space in the shed, and eliminate the step of wrestling the barrel onto and off of the cinder-block pad we built for it, which is what Brian suspected had damaged the bottom of our current one. It had all the features we needed: a mosquito screen on top, a hose hookup on the bottom, and an overflow valve near the top. And the fact that it's a repurposed food container is decidedly ecofrugal.

When I consulted the reviews, I saw nothing to discourage me even in the negative ones. The most common complaint was that the spigot leaked or fell off, but that was nothing we couldn't handle, especially since we already had a whole new spigot we'd bought for our current barrel. (There was also one amusing one-star review from someone complaining that the product was "not only used but used for transporting food items"—a fact that's stated right in the product description and that, in my view, was a feature rather than a bug.)

A quick $100 PayPal payment later, our new rain barrel is on its way. We didn't even have to have it shipped to a nearby Home Depot store for pickup; having it sent directly to our home was free and actually slightly faster. 

As for the old, cracked rain barrel, Brian has a plan to put that to a new use: growing potatoes. We didn't have much success the first time we tried this using 5-gallon buckets, but Brian thinks it might work better if we plant the potatoes in a nice big barrel with plenty of room. The crack in the bottom won't be a problem, since it needs drainage holes anyway. And we won't need to worry about protecting the plants from groundhogs, since the tall, smooth-sided barrel will be too hard for them to climb. Deer may still be a problem, but Brian thinks he can deter those with a little fence of chicken wire around the top. We just need to figure out where in the yard to put the barrel for maximum potato potential.