How safe the water will be all depends on what you plan to use it for? Obviously not safe for drinking but for watering a garden - edible or non-edible plants - sure. There are many safe degreasing agents available that are much more effective than Dawn. Just Google 'degreasing agents'. Some are even organic such as orange oil. They can be used with a high pressure washer with great effectiveness especially if you can hook it up to a hot water source. I'm not sure how clean you can get them though working just through the bung hole. That will be difficult. After washing them out as best as possible I'd fill them with water and one of the soaps and letting them sit in the sun for a couple of weeks. Let the sun heat them - are they plastic or metal? - and then flush them out again. Use your nose on them. :) And down the line, if a bucket of water from them still forms scum on its surface they need more cleaning. Hope this helps. Dave

Our 8 rain barrels hold 60 gallons each are situatied at the 4 corners of the house and catch all the runoff. We use a small electric pump and garden hose to move the water into large holding tanks back of the garage. Each holding tank stores 300 gallons of water and we have four of them. Since we are in zone 7 we don't really have to worry about them freezing in winter. This rain water is used to water gardens and yard and would be used in emergency if we lost power or the well went dry. I have house water piped to the greenhouse, but it would also be a simple operation to move the water from the holding tanks to the greenhouse should that become necessary. the little pumps are available at any farm or hardware store and are not very expensive. if you had a rain barrel near your greenhouse you could move the water directly onto your plants from that barrel with the pump, hose and spray nozzle.

Way to go Sharon! It seems like Advanced Drum has been charging more for their barrels (earlier in the year they were $18!). I have 6 barrels and no problem getting water out of them. You can configure your barrels to suit your needs. I have a spiggot on the bottom, and the tops removed, altered and screened for dipping buckets in. They have not been dry this summer as I only water parts of the landscape, not all of it. Although the watering of vegetables with this water is not recommended, I do it anyway. There is no other alternative for me to get water to the veggies except from the hose which I haven't done much of at all this summer, I refuse to. The trick to the rain barrels is to make sure you have enough to suit your needs, and they are an excellent solution to watering problems. If you run an extended link of the barrels (I have them in pairs, but will probably change that to one very long linking of them) a pump works well and can be hooked up to different watering units in different barrels. A sump pump is about $65. You could run an entire watering system for under a $500. That sure beats at $8,000 cistern instillation! GGG

yes... I searched many of the old threads. However, I did manage to locate a number of excellent barrels by using the Minnesota Material Exchange web site. There are a number of business that list drums (as well as other materials such as pallets) that they want to get rid of. I would highly recommend anyone looking to find cheap or throwaway materials for a project to check there. I had to make a road trip out of it, as the barrels were in Central MN... but it was worth the drive! I got 9 barrels that are white, somewhat translucent, with markings on the side for how many gallons are in each. They used to hold vanilla, so no cleaning will be needed. I paid $5/each for them. For anyone interested, I found the following link which has inspired me on this project. (http://www.emmitsburg.net/gardens/articles/adams/audrey/water_barrel.htm) Thanks for the help! Here is a link that might be useful: elevated rain barrel idea