Our Tin Can

Tin Lizzie?

We have 3 spots that rain water come off the roof in sheets during a heavy downpour.  One spot in the back has the new rain barrel setting under it.  That is working out good.

Another spot is just outside our front door.  This spot has been a mess during rainy season for years.  I've been working on improving the drainage, and it is a bit better.  But still not good during a heavy downpour.

All that rain water coming down from the top roof creates quite the cascade.

Our new tin can will let us save more rain water (169 gallons) and will hopefully improve the flooding situation.

I brought it home, and hubs took one look and said "I have a tin can in my front yard.  Hide it."  Woot!  Open ended plant buying authorized.  What fun!

We now have a 400 gallon rain water storage capacity.  And a few odds, and ends of buckets and barrels.

I'm not quite decided on how to handle storm overflow.  Must think on that a bit more.

To install, I leveled the sand** then re-set and leveled the concrete squares I'd been using to break water.  I filled the entire area with Paver's Base (a coarse gritty sand) and leveled that.  Put the tank on top and let it sit overnight.  Came back the next afternoon and adjusted as needed.

The plants along the front will grow up and hide our tin can a bit better, and should be tolerant of the occasional wet feet.  Canna lily, Liriope, Coleus, and Caladium.  I also want to add some Blue Eyed Grass.

This fall, I will start an annual vine on the expandable willow trellis.  Then next spring I'll start another Winged Bean vine to grow on it.  If I can get some more tillandsia and bromeliad's from around the yard, those might look nice stuck in the trellis.  Oh, and maybe some rain chains between the wind chimes?

I took the bung hole port out and replaced it with a spigot and attached a water hose permanently.  There is a special 'through wall' spigot I bought that is male threaded with a silicon fastener to tighten and seal.

Once we are happy with the willow trellis, I'll need to cut an access port to the spigot handle.

On the inside of the tank, I glued a drain cover over the bung hole so that if we put fish in they can't get sucked out when I'm watering.

I filled the tank enough with tap water that I could check the water tightness of  my handiwork.  Then I added 5 gallons of pond water to seed it.

Now we are ready for rain.  It's quite dry out there, the 35 gallon rain can is empty and the 100 gallon barrel is about 50%.  Bring on the rain please!

Oh, and don't you think a few plants IN the tank will help the looks????

**  Our 'soil' is sand.  If you have real soil you may want to start with paver base or paver sand.