Tonight, in honor of the wonderful weather, I made a quick contraption out of some scrap to better get water into my rain barrel.
I’ve been wedging the downspout against the bung hole of my barrel but I think the vibrations of the water pops it loose. No water capture dumping water beside the barrel.
A rain barrel debris diverter let’s water through but washes twigs and leaves away from the barrel. This can be done by having a screen at an angle. Water goes straight through. Crud gets stopped and the water washes it down the screen where it falls off.
I had some PVC pipe and the shell from a rear projection TV. So I cobbled these together into my diverter with my heat gun.
The thing works. I don’t much like it though. Good enough for now.
I am going to make a better one that will keep mosquitoes out in the near future. I also will make a roof washer which is a contraption that captures the first bit of rain and diverts it away from the rain barrel. This keeps small and dissolved stuff like dust and bird poo out of your rain barrel. First I have to finish re-hanging the sagging gutters and install the gutter guards I found in the garage.
