Rain Barrel Diverter

Rain Barrel Diverters AKA Downspout Diverters

If you’re going to install a rain barrel, the first thing you’re going to need is a Rain Barrel Diverter. The primary purpose of a Rain Barrel Diverter is to obviously divert rainwater from your downspout/downpipe to the inlet of your rain barrel.

They come in all shapes and sizes to suit different size downspouts but they do have some common flaws or limitations.

Firstly, they can limit which downspouts you may wish to attach them to. Because rain barrel diverters are attached to the downspout they are quite easily seen from some distance, so you may not want to attach a rain barrel diverter to a downspout that is situated at the front of your house.

Secondly, a rain barrel diverter usually requires the rain barrel to be situated next to the downspout which can also limit your choices of downspouts you may wish to attach it to.

Thirdly, some rain barrel diverters have a two position flap or a lever so that rainwater can either be diverted to the rain barrel or back to the downspout, whichever is preferred. To my way of thinking this is ok but I tend to think that if you’re half serious about rainwater harvesting, why would you want to divert rainwater back into the downspout where you can never use it?

So when I built my rain barrels I made sure that I installed a rain barrel diverter that would overcome these limitations.

The downspout I wanted to collect rainwater from was right near my front door so that last thing I wanted was a rain barrel diverter attached to my downspout with a rain barrel installed right next to it. I didn’t think that this look would complement the appearance of my house. Secondly I had bushes planted around the downspout so there really wasn’t any room for a rain barrel anyway.

The other problem that I had to solve was I didn’t want to have to divert any rainwater back into the downspout when my rain barrels were full. You see I only get around 300mm (12 in) of rainfall per year so for me every drop of rainwater that I can collect I either store or gets diverted to my garden.

So as you can see these were the problems I had to overcome. Of course the obvious solution would have been to attach a rain barrel diverter to a downspout somewhere else on my house that was more out of the way. The problem (not really a problem) with this was I was already harvesting rainwater from the other 9 downspouts and storing it in 3 much larger rainwater tanks. You see this was the last downspout on my house that I wasn’t harvesting rainwater from.

Therefore I needed a rain barrel diverter that would meet my requirements. Luckily for me I’d previously developed a rainwater diverter for my roof gutters that diverts extra rainwater to my larger rainwater tanks some time ago. What I was easily able to do was adapt this diverter into a rain barrel diverter.

This new diverter that I developed now meant that I didn’t need a large rain barrel diverter on the outside of my downspout as the one I developed was fully contained.

Secondly I was able to position the two rain barrels I made some distance from the downspout. This enabled me to place them in a more convenient position which was also more accessible.

Thirdly, my new rain barrel diverter also enabled to attach a tap so as to divert rainwater along the gutter to the next downspout that was connected to the inlet of one of my much larger rainwater tanks. This allowed me to choose whether the rainwater was best stored in the rain barrels or the larger rainwater tank.

Then as a backup to my rain barrels overflowing I attached some irrigation pipe to the overflow so that if I had the tap selected to the rain barrels instead of diverting to the larger rainwater tank the overflow from the rain barrels would still divert rainwater directly to my garden.

So you can see my rain barrel diverter is quite adaptable. It has allowed me to incorporate my two rain barrels into a much larger rainwater collection system and the great thing about it is its fully contained so from the outside you wouldn’t even know it was there. Then as a double bonus, it’s also very inexpensive and easy to make yourself.

So if you’d like to find out more about rain barrel diverters, download my eBook How to Make a Rain Barrel it’s FREE for a limited time.