First Rain

As it turns out, I chose a good day to set up my rain barrel. Shortly after completing construction, we had a gentle rain for less than an hour. I had closed all the spigots in the rain barrel so that I could measure how much rain we got. What a surprise!

Here you see the rain barrel is just over half full (half empty?). The picture is a little fuzzy but it best shows the level of water in the barrel and the rate at which it was filling.

It's important to note that this rain barrel is fed by less than half of my roof. In a separate blog I will show calculations but for now I can say, one barrel will not be enough to store all the rain water from an average Chicago rain.

Fortunately, I do not intend to store the water from this side of the house. The goal for this rain barrel is to control the water that comes onto the site and the rain barrel allows me to decide where it goes and when. By leaving the soaker hose attached and the spigot open, I can disperse the water over a greater area and send it towards the native plant garden at the front of my house. This way, the barrel is continuously emptying and, my hope is that it will never become full or overflow.

You are probably now wondering what I intend to do with the excess water in a typical or heavy rain. The rain barrel has been an easy solution for now. As I develop the plans for the entire site, I am exploring options. The most likely option presently is to bury the existing drain tile along its current course. This will take excess water flowing out of the top rain barrel spigot and put it immediately underground (a general water management goal). The water in the drain tile will behave much like the soaker hose but will put the water at the roots of plants or just below, encouraging them to grow deep. Of course, this all depends on how much digging I can handle to get the drain tile below ground - a labor-intensive option.