Rain Chains Installed!

Today I worked on the plumbing to hook up the rain chains to the 300 gallon rain tote and the drain that goes to the pond. It took about 4 hours to cut into the deck and install two simulated (fiberglass) concrete urns into the deck and drain. I used these urns because I could used an 3.5 inch hole saw to cut the hole into the bottom of the urn.

This photo was a test using the garden hose to see what the rain chains look like with water going down them. This is the tear drop cup rain chain, I really like the tear drop chain links on these. FYI all the chain links have been soldered together, these are nice quality rain chains from India.

This is the hammered cup rain chain, it has more cups that the other rain chain, they are closer together.. This side I hooked up to a drain that goes to our pond. The gutter man still has to install the gutters for us, the chains were just hung from a screw to line up the drains. It is cheaper to have the gutter guy make the gutters custom than my buying gutters at the big box store(bronze gutters are no longer available either) and installing them myself. Gutters and downspouts run $3 a foot installed around here. We used to line up 5 gallon buckets here to collect rain water.

Here is an update: The hammered cup rain chain is a complete failure in a heavy rain. I have a video of it during a downpour, the holes in the cups are too small making the water exit the first few cups, I have a video here.

This rain chain goes to the rain tote. A lot of water comes down here, half the screened porch, and one quarter of the living room roof drains here. We have had problems with water splashing on the door and seeping through the 2 piece threshold(never buy exterior doors at Lowes!). This was the first time in 35 years of construction I've seen an exterior door with a crappy threshold like this.  Please excuse the mess in the porch.

Here is a close up of the hammered cup rain chain.

This is the drain system under the deck that goes to the rain tote.

In case your wondering how the urns attached to the drain. I used a male adapter to attach the urn to the PVC pipe and cut the threads off a female adapter to make a threaded nut for the male adapter. I siliconed the male adapter to the urn and then screwed down the home made nut to hold it together securely.

Here is the 300 gallon rain tote under the screened porch. I still need to hook up the over flow pipe out of 2" PVC pipe.

The cost of creating this system FYI:

2 rain chains with shipping $200
2 urns  $75
1 300 gallon rain tote and delivery $95
3 inch PVC piping and fittings  $80
We spent $450 on this. My fees as a handyman installing the rain tote and running the plumbing would have been around $400 so unless your handy this could cost you around $850 to do. That is if you could get the deal we got on the rain tote and had a reasonable handyman.

We still have another 300 gallon rain tote to install under the work shop. This one will be built on a platform to raise it up a bit. The rain tote full of water will weight 2400 pounds so it will be strong and set on concrete pads.


On the recycling front, Meg found a computer desk and really nice barely used sled today curbside in front of some rich folks house while running down a deal from Craigslist.  The sled is like a Flexible Flyer, but not that brand, here in NC we might could use it ever few years, with the snows we get.

Today the brand new hose I purchased 3 weeks ago was left on at the house spigot and shut off with a timer at the other end. The hose burst partially next to the spigot and now needs a replacement female end..... The upper 90s here can mess up a hose pretty quick.