How do you drain the barrels?

Our barrels are in the basement. Code in our area dictates that a basement should have a floor drain. We run a hose from the bib on the barrel to the water drain in the floor. I've not timed how long it takes to drain, but it's not more than several minutes.

Draining a barrel

If your barrels are needing to drain to a place above where they are (not sure why you'd do this), then you'll need to get a pump of some kind (manual, electric, etc).

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.