1. What do you do with the rain you collect?

Since the rain collected is not for drinking, we recommend you treat your plants to what they love most, rain water!You can do this a couple of ways:

• A. Use watering cans and hand water small areas, potted outdoor plants or house plants.
• B. Connect a drip hose and water a small vegetable garden or flower bed and watch your plants grow with appreciation!

2. Does the water get stagnant, smell or get mosquitoes?

The answer to this is, if you’ve maintained your gutters and  debris screen properly then NO.  The screen is designed to filter most of the debris from getting in the barrel.  Rotting organic matter is what will make the water stink.  Also insects are not able to get in to breed either.  If you want extra assurance use 1/2 of a BT mosquito dunk nothing else.  also you should be USING YOUR WATER.  Saving for a rainy day in this case is bad.  You want your tank almost empty so it can collect fresh free rain again and again!

3. Will it get empty?

This will all depend on your usage and the amount of rain we receive.  In general it takes very little rainfall to re-fill the tank.  If it gets empty just wait for the next rain, or do a little rain dance or something!

4.  What do I do in the winter?

We recommend that once a year, and the winter is a great time, you open and rinse out your barrel. You can then store it empty in the garage full of basketballs or do as we do and use it as a table base on your patio. Just get a 30″ diameter table top from the home improvement center and voila! Party table. We don’t recommend that you let it freeze and thaw full of water, no one would last long doing that!

5. Do you install?

Yes we do. We charge 50.00 including the cinder blocks for most of the north Dallas area. Please let us know where you live so we can give you an accurate fee. Our truck is a gas guzzler.

6. What about overflow?

When full, your barrel will overflow kind of like one of those high priced fountains you see. It will flow over the sides and go where it was going before. If in fact you’re more particular about where it flows, we offer an “overflow port” which can be connected to a flex pipe and directed where you’d like. There is a small extra fee for the overflow port.

7. How much water pressure will it have?

Not enough for you to wash your car. When full it will send out about 2 gallons per minute. Great pressure to fill a watering can or run a drip line.

8. Why is the spigot not all the way at the bottom?

You will get a bit of dirt sediment in the tank, this will settle to the bottom so when you turn on the spigot the water will be pretty clear. The sediment will be minimal and once a year should be all you need to rinse it out.

9. Who are the Waterkeepers?

Local Plano residents Kari Gates and her son Ryan. Yes we were on Channel 5 news pretty cool huh?

10. Where are these made?

The barrels are recycled containers that used to contain food. We convert them to these cool rain barrels in our garage in Plano so you’re supporting a local family and helping Ryan to pay college tuition! Thanks

 We thank you so much for your interest in saving water and using our rain collection barrels to help you do just that!