I finally bought a Rain Barrel to catch rain water.  This is a kind of a cool one that has a tap at the bottom so I can use the rain water to water my potted plants and perennials out front.  I bought it for $50, including the barrel(made from recycled plastic!), and then had to buy $30 more of parts to finish it out.  It started raining the day I installed it and it was full of 55 gallons of water by the next morning!  The water is just gravity driven, but it has pretty good water pressure.

I bought them at my local Habitat for Humanity Restore location near 55th and Kansas Ave in KCK.  It’s a great place to go for cheap parts.

While it’s nice to have water on-hand, for free, to water my plants I really just bought this to try to help with stormwater runoff.  It’s not good for all our lawn chemicals to get pulled into the waterways as it creates algae plumes and other nastiness.  When I rent this house to someone, I’ll remove the barrel and take it with me.

Here is the downspout I chose.  I chose this one because I found some slight erosion at this one and it was near my plants.

Here I’ve used a saw to cut the downspout off.  I did a rough cut just to have space to get the barrel close.  Don’t use a recip, use a hacksaw.  I used a reciprocating saw and cut into my siding with it.

Here is my leveled cinder blocks that are on top of some pea gravel.

Here is the finished install.  Sorry there are no pics of the middle of the install, but I was racing a storm.