Rain Barrel Diverters Protect Your Foundation From Overflows

About three years ago, I built myself a rain barrel from a 55-gallon plastic pickle container. I set it up on concrete blocks about 2 ft. off the ground and placed it directly underneath a sawed-off downspout on my garage so the water flows directly into the barrel.

It works OK, but I’m a little under-whelmed with my rain barrel for two reasons:

1. Even though I set it up on blocks, there’s not enough water pressure to send the water through the spigot at anything more than a trickle.

2. The overflow port on the barrel is inadequate. During rainstorms, the barrel fills so fast that the water spills out of the narrow overflow opening as well as the top of the barrel and runs down the sides. Since the barrel sits against our old, decrepit, soon-to-be-replaced detached garage, I’m not that worried. But if this were happening near our house foundation, it could be a real problem.

A 1,000-sq.-ft. roof will shed about 620 gallons of water during a 1-in. rainfall. That’s about 155 gallons per downspout if you’ve got four of them. If you’ve got a rain barrel hooked up to one of your downspouts and it works (or doesn’t) like mine, once the barrel fills there’s a lot of water being dumped next to your basement. Don’t forget to check out our collection of decorative rain barrels.

Here’s a simple solution—a rain barrel downspout diverter. The rain barrel downspout diverter attaches to your downspout and channels water into the barrel until it’s full. At that point, the diverter automatically sends the water through the downspout and away from your foundation. Fiskars’ new DiverterPro water diverter kit ($40) is nifty because it attaches to almost any rain barrel system and it works with the two different size downspouts (3 x 4-in. and 2 x 3-in). It also includes a removable filter to keep debris out of your rain barrel. (Click here to purchase the Fiskars DiverterPro water diverter from our affiliate Amazon.com.)

I have one last piece of advice and this applies whether you have a rain barrel or not. Make sure your gutter downspouts discharge water at least 10 ft. from your home to prevent basement flooding and water damage to your foundation. If yours don’t, consider adding extensions in addition to a rain barrel downspout diverter.

— Elisa Bernick, Associate Editor

Want to build your own rain barrel? Use these step-by-step instructions to build a rain barrel.

See more energy saving tips and projects from The Family Handyman.