House Blog

Howdy has been playing with rain barrels for a few years, but recently he took the next step and hooked them up to their toilet, so the toilet now flushes with rain water. I love this idea, since flushing a toilet with drinking water (5 gallons = 19 liters for each flush) always seemed like a waste to me.

So I was motivated to find some barrels and collect the rain water from my roof. This also helps my foundation, since the rain water used to drain right next to the foundation, which can cause problems.

I asked around and Jono had a good connection with somebody involved in catering for Picante's (very good Mexican restaurant in Berkeley) and somehow I got some steel drums that used to be full of honey and were used by Cafe Fanny for their granola. Each drum holds 55 gallons (208 liter), which used to be 640 lbs (290 kg) of organic honey. I *love* honey, so I really like the fact that I have old honey barrels as my rain barrels. I have 3 of them (one for each downspout). They will all be linked together and then to a pump, which will pump water to my toilet tank when it is drained.

Tonight Howdy helped me pick out all the plumbing parts at Pastime Ace Hardware, and 1 hour later and $105 lighter, I got parts. I forgot to get some pipe to adapt to my current downspouts, but I put the other stuff together. Here are a few pictures.