Rain barrels - installed

Here's the rain barrel wrap-up with a few photos. Jay and I spent a morning building stands for the barrels (a single-barrel and a double-barrel!). I was quite proud that the only money I put into the stands was the fasteners (screws, nuts and bolts). All the treated wood (4x4s, deck boards and even a few 2x6s) were left over from a deck project way before Jay got here, and stored in the rafters of the garage. I took them down, protected them with leftover deck stain and built stands to dimensions of the available wood.

Mocking up the stand with available wood.

Initial barrel placement to see how it fit with the rest of the bed at right. My goal is to use the single barrel to water the very nearby herb garden, and the double barrel to water the much larger beds along the garage (lettuce, radish and more basil and cilantro, nasturtium and a few zinnias and cosmos that are going to hate the partial shade.

Single barrel from a friend, used to water the herb bed at left.  We then installed the barrels on some paving bricks that previous owners had left in the basement. 

The two barrels bough at the City of Madison sale. The left gets water first via the white flexible gutter, and then overflows via the black pipe between. The left barrel overflows onto the ground. The white hose at bottom is supposed to even the water between barrels, have yet to get enough water to see if this is plumbing magic or not.

I wanted to "hide" the two barrels as much as possible. This is the view of them from the street. My original idea was to use a soaker hose to water the beds; I quickly discovered it needed a lot of water pressure to work, very low water pressure out of these barrels even up on 30-inch stands.