Plastic drums have many uses, one of which is water conservation.
Water conservation is an honorable and useful thing. It make perfect sense to utilize the various water conservation tools at our disposal. Simply catching rain in a barrel is one way of doing this. It was common, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, for houses to be built with large concrete tanks in their basements or under their porches to catch the rain from the rain gutters. The water was then used for washing clothes or flushing toilets, and some was filtered and used for bathing. Today, trapped water can be used to wash a car or water a vegetable garden. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Use some bleach and mild dish soap to thoroughly clean the inside of the plastic drum or barrel. Place an opened trash bag into a small pail and hold it in place with a rubber band. Dump the dirty wash water from the barrel into the pail. Place the pail in the sun away from animals and allow the the water to evaporate. Dispose of the dried-out trash bag.
2. Measure the diameter of the smaller section of the colander. The colander or strainer must have a sufficient lip on its top edge. Trace a circle the same size as the colander's smaller circle around the small bung in the drum.
3. Insert the saw blade of the jigsaw into the small bung and carefully cut out toward the traced circle so that the colander will fit into the cut-out hole and the outer lip of the colander prevents it from falling into the drum.
4. Thread a barrel pump, with a garden hose attached to the out hose, tightly into the larger threaded bung.
5. Place the water collection drum level under the down spout of the rain gutter. Place a hollow red ball into the colander so that if the colander fills with water the ball will float to the top and can be seen as an indicator to clean the colander screen. Check and clean the colander frequently to remove leaves or other debris.
Tags: clean colander, into small, small bung, that colander, wash water