Green Living
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Rain barrels
What are your opinions on them? Do they work well? Any recommendations for brands or features are welcome!
I twitter randomly about gardening, sustainable living, local restaurants, cooking and more. Follow me on Twitter at Sarah_STL
Re: Rain barrels
I'm a lurker, but I'll jump in because my dissertation research includes rain barrels....
1 - Whether or not they work depends on your region. In the southwest, for example, it isn't really worth the expense because there isn't enough rain to collect. But in the South, all of the rain fall happens in the spring and it's good for watering flower beds.
2 - make sure you do your homework before your buy. You need to make sure the kit includes a screen for the point of attachment onto the gutter, as well as any other openings to stop mosquito infestations (I've heard complaints about this, but when I look into it's often that the screens is not installed properly or aren't there at all)
3 - I don't know that they save money in terms of water costs (using excess rainwater to water your garden in lieu of the city water supply) but it is definitely environmentally helpful. Storm water runoff is a leading cause of non-point source pollution, so every little bit that is collected and re-used later will decrease that pollution.
HTH!
We got one last summer and I really like it. That downspout gets a lot of water. The water runs down a hill in our yard and puddles where it shouldn't. With the rain barrel, we stopped a lot of the problem and used the water where we actually needed it. We will probably get one more to connect to that one as an overflow and another one for the other side of the house.
Ours is a food grade plastic barrel that was used for mayo if I remember right. I painted it green and my plan is to grow a climbing vine next to it this year so it covers the barrel. I'd like a wood one but this one was only $35 through our co-op.
We have a screen over the hole on the top and mosquito haven't been a problem. We built a stand for it to help with water pressure and got a hose to hook up to the spigot so I don't have to carry buckets of water all around the yard.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
We recently got a gigantic (like 300 gallon) one free from our neighor. It was a food-grade container from some manufacturing plant that he had already retrofitted into a rain barrel. DH picked it up on his own before I even saw the beast. I applaud his GL actions, but it's really ugly. We're working on some ways to hide it better.
Before that, I was going to build my own using the instructions from this post awhile back: http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/ShowThread.aspx?PostID=49160670;
Wow, that is gigantic! Is it somewhere that you could plant flowers around it or put potted flowers on it that hang down? Or maybe you could put a wooden fence type thing around it to hide it from view.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
Yes, those are both ideas we've been discussing. It's alongside the house next to the air handling unit, which it actually dwarfs. I think we'll probably hide both behind trellis fencing and plant climbing plants at the base to grow up it.