Rain Barrels and More 50 gallon Plastic

I bought this 50 gallon Terra cotta rain barrel from rainbarrelsandmore.com. I also bought a RainReserve rain diverter system from rainreserve.com. I connected the RainReserve system to my gutter downspout and then followed the rest of the instructions to connect it to my rain barrel. It relatively simple and took about an hour to setup. The 50 gallon barrel and the RainReserve system are made out of recycled and eco friendly materials. They keep misquitoes, debris, and other bugs out. They also are UV protective so algae does not grow in your water and system.

I really like this rain barrel for several reasons.  Number one - it's cheap!  I found a lot of very expensive rain barrels in my research, but Rain Barrels and More offers several 50-gallon plastic barrels for $90-100.  Not too shabby.

These barrels were orginally used for shipping Greek peppers to the US, so I also appreciate that it's a good reuse of the materials.  Plus they actually smell pretty nice inside!

The only negative is that some people think they're ugly.  Ed Begley Jr. coincidentally has the same rain barrel as me, and his wife tried to get rid of it because she thought it was an eyesore!  Personally I think it looks perfectly fine.  It's just a big barrel painted in a terra-cotta color.  But the same website offers some brown and green and blue ones, as well as some wooden barrels.  Of course, the wooden ones are more expensive, but do look quite nice.

So anyway, I'm happy with the barrel.  It hasn't rained much so we haven't had a chance to use it, but installation was simple.  The only difficult part was cutting the rain gutter (difficult to do with a hacksaw - use power tools if possible!).