Rain-Related Issues

It rains in Luzianne, sometimes a lot. When it does, my gutters tend to overflow when the rain overwhelms the downspouts. This aggravates me.

On an unrelated note, I got a nasty letter from the sewage and water board. I apparently use too much water to irrigate the garden. Can't have the roses getting dried out, or so The Wife tells me.

It occurred to me that I can use these problems to fix one another. I decided to put in a new downspout and install a rain barrel, then hook the irrigation system up to said barrel. Should work like a charm, right?

So I priced rain barrels. The damn things are like $100. I refuse to spend that kind of money for what is essentially $5 worth of molded plastic with a hose tap at the bottom. I bought a $10 trash can, some silicon gel, and a hose tap. Combined, they form Voltron a perfectly workable rain barrel.

Well, almost. My first attempt leaked like a sieve, so I stripped it down and rebuilt it, this time adding a flexible hose to the tap, thus keeping the irrigation timer from torquing the tap and breaking the seal around it. We just had our first big rainstorm since that event, and everything seems to be working just fine.

We'll see how the garden likes it....