Upgrade Your Rain Barrel

Four way hose connector + 4 female hose ends

The most recent issue of Mother Earth News features an article showing how to improve your rain barrels. Since much of the country is in a drought, now is a great time to test it out. A whole lotta rain can be captured from your roof- a lot more than can usually be stored in the average sized rain barrel. This method saves the rain water directly in your garden, where you want it, instead of overflowing the spot near your barrel.You can read our original detailed how to make a rain barrel here. We just took one the original barrel we made in that how to and improved it with these few steps.

Purchase a 4 way hose connector and 3 female hose end replacements OR a Y-two way hose connector and 1 female hose end replacement. Female hose replacement is just a funny name for metal end of your hose that connects to the facet.

1. Screw the 4 way hose connector onto your existing facet on your rain barrel. 

2. Cut up an old hose* into 4 parts (or 2). Attach female hose end replacements to hoses following the directions on the package. 

*To get a little more specific on how we cut our hoses, we attached the hose to the barrel, then walked it out to where we wanted the water to go in the garden and cut it off there. Then we attached the first female hose end replacement to the cut hose piece, attached that to the barrel, walked it out to the next place in the garden we wanted water and cut it off there...so forth.

If you don't have an old hose laying around, ask friends and family or keep your eyes open during trash pick up. Lots of old hoses with holes and leaks are thrown away every day.

3.Now depending on your garden layout and water needs, you can either feed these hoses as is to fruit trees or other areas of your garden that can handle a lot of water OR you can drill some holes in the hoses so when it rains and the barrel fills up, the water will drain right into your garden where you want it.

4. Check your garden after the first few downpours to see if you drilled the right number of holes. Drill more if the water is flooding an area or duct tape up some holes if the water can't make it to the end. You can also clamp off the end of your hose by folding it over with a c-clamp or duct tape if you want to prevent too much water from spilling out the end.

Viola! You built a better mousetrap rain barrel.