Thursday, February 10, 2011

How did you fill the barrels?

Ken asked: How did you get water into the barrels?

At your local big box do-it-yourself store, or at other local hardware retailers, you can find a 3/4" sink/hose adapter. I believe it cost me about $4. It attaches to your sink faucet and has threads that a standard hose can be attached to. Then run a food-grade hose from the sink to the barrels. We bought RV water hoses (from Wal-Mart) to use, but any food grade hose will work.

Faucet/Hose adapter

In our case, the barrels are in the basement. So I needed about 100' of hose, and luckily most of it was flowing downstairs, so water pressure was not an issue. You insert the hose into the top opening and fill the water until it's about to start coming out. Add any conditioner/cleaner you feel is necessary (Not going to get into that as that's a whole other discussion), and then replace the cap and tighten.

Filling a barrel. The bottom bib is obvious closed.

In the image above, you can see the water stain on the floor. That's from screwing in a hose bib too tight and cracking the bung cap. I didn't realize it was leaking until some time later. Be careful installing the hose bib to avoid the same problem.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Seems that one would be a lot of spill when tapping each full barrel.

Suggest put a fitting in the top bung of the top barrel to attach a hose to fill. Then plumb a line from the bottom bung of the top barrel to the top of the barrel below it. Continue down the stack and end with a bib/faucet in the lowest bung near the floor and put a hose on there. Then you can fill all the stack of barrels from one hose and empty all of them with the one bottom hose (with greater pressure/flow rate also). Add a hook to hold the hoses when they are rolled up. If so skilled, putting a Tee and a brass faucet in the main water line near the barrel rack makes filling easier. Locating the rack near the floor drain (near the water heater normally) is also good idea.

Karollin said...

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