You can find rain barrels on Craiglist

ptpt said:
You can also find "used" but clean 55-275 gallons industrial plastic drums (barrels) just about anywhere for far less than this item. Here's also one example of a place where you can buy, far more capacious ones: http://www.plastic-mart.com

Hope this helps.
you should never use barrels that were not initially used for food.

cnIsfg said:michal1980 said:Nearly 1 billion gallons of poop into lake michigancnIsfg said:SelfGovern said:VirtuaL said:vegetation said:It's actually more of an issue if you discharge rainwater into the sewer system which most municipalities forbid. An inspector wouldn't buy the fact you're using it for your garden. One barrel wouldn't matter of course, but if you plan to string together a dozen of these, watch out.
Are sewer systems not set up to accept rainwater or something??

Sewer systems? No. That's where the water you use in your house goes... down the drain, out to the sewer system. Significant amounts of rainwater, if diverted to the sewer system, would overwhelm it, and you'd probably end up with raw (if slightly diluted!) sewage overflowing to the ground, streams, etc. Or backing up in to your house.

The holes in the curb, on the other hand, are storm drains, which are not a part of the sewer system. Storm drain water is typically unprocessed, and flows into lakes, rivers, and the ocean (so you can see why it's important not to mix the two).

In the US at least short of a flood or living below sea level (ie New Orleans) it is near impossible to overwhelm a modern sewer system regardless of the amount of fluids introduced. In fact, just the opposite is true for most local municipalities. They spend a good portiion of their budget flushing out sewer systems due to lack of fluids to deliver the solids to the processing plants so to minimuze the need for this process and to facilitate solid delivery the stormwater and sewer are NOT seperate systems once you leave streel level. Most modern municipalities interconnect the stormwater and sewer systems via a man-hole system where storm drain water flows in for the upper level of the man-hole and then down to the lower sewer grade level. According to most municipal code the sewer grade must be at least 16ft below street grade. The downside to running combined systms is that the system must be frequently cleaned out of foreign debris that enters the storm drains.

Outside the US? Well anything goes and yes unprocessed sewage does often flow into lakes, rivers, and even the ocean!

Wrong.

Here in milwaukee, they have combined sewer and rain lines. (they are soo 'smart')

so in recent storms we dumbed

Uh wrong how? Perhaps you need to re-read what I posted and the the article YOU linked. I stated ....In the US at least short of a flood or living below sea level (ie New Orleans) it is near impossible to overwhelm a modern sewer system regardless of the amount of fluids introduced.....

The article you linked clearly stated they received 13+ inches of rain in just under 3 hours. What is YOUR definition of a flood?

milwaukee dumbs sewage into the lake just about every storm.

combined sewer lines are just about the stupidest system a city could have.

hream said:To me, it's less about the break-even point and more about being environmentally friendly. Saving water is a good thing regardless of whether it shows up in your wallet!

There's enough water next to me here in the ocean in north county (San Diego) to let everyone waste water for the next 1000 years...and we're tapping into it via desalination - heck, maybe we'll offset the polar ice caps that are melting if we use enough

zenob said:hream said:To me, it's less about the break-even point and more about being environmentally friendly. Saving water is a good thing regardless of whether it shows up in your wallet!

There's enough water next to me here in the ocean in north county (San Diego) to let everyone waste water for the next 1000 years...and we're tapping into it via desalination - heck, maybe we'll offset the polar ice caps that are melting if we use enough

NM

What about soap concentrate barrels from a car wash? They say non-toxic on them. Possible to rinse them enough?