How to Make a Rain Barrel on A Budget

If you know anything about rain barrels they are typically super expensive. Maybe there is a reason, but as an amateur gardener I don’t know what that reason is. So I decided to make my own more affordable version so that I could water my garden. I live in the Pacific Northwest so it seems silly NOT to harvest rain. One thing to note before you start this project is to look up and see if rain harvesting is legal where you live. In some areas it is not, if it isn’t skip this DIY.

Making the rain barrel is quick and easy. Probably ten minutes total, so let’s get to it!

Materials

• Plastic garbage can -mine is 32 gallons
• Spigot
• Teflon tape -optional
• Rain barrel screen or tightly woven mesh of some sort
• Waterproof sealant
• Spade drill bit

installing the rain barrel screen

First up we are going to cut some holes. For the lid I used this rain barrel screen I found on amazon. You could purchase something similar or find a piece of screen and attach it. This is to keep the bugs out and water in…all good things. To attach it to the rain barrel I traced the screen and then carefully cut the hole out with scissors. I cut inside the line I traced because you want a nice snug fit. Once this is cut out insert the screen, flip the lid over, and use a bead of waterproof sealant around the screen. This step is going to make sure that no bugs can get in. Trust me when I say you don’t want to skip this step. Unless you’ve figured out how to charge mosquitos rent for living in your rain barrel.

Installing the spigot

To install the spigot you are going to need your drill and a spade drill bit that is the same size as the threads of the spigot. Again you want this to be a nice snug fit. I put my spigot about 6 inches from the bottom, you just don’t want it super high otherwise it will be hard to get the water out. Before you put your spigot through the hole you want to put teflon tape around the threads. This helps the seal stay tight and not leak. This is probably an optional step but I had teflon tape, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.

Rain barrel- total cost

So that’s it! It’s really that easy to make a rain barrel. So how much did it cost you ask? Around $50 some of the materials I already had which I added into the total cost anyways. You could probably make this even cheaper if you looked for materials secondhand. I however wanted to make mine quickly to take advantage of the last bit of PNW rain season so I bought all new. Still not to shabby considering the cheapest rain barrel I found on Amazon was about $100.