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I’ll give my brother some credit for finding this, but I did steer him towards it. He was looking to separate his downspouts from the sewers. In many places this has become a requirement and if it isn’t in your town, you should do it anyway. This simple, inexpensive change saves the local water authority from having to process all that extra water during storms, which in a large scale means less energy used and fewer rate hikes!

He was a little concerned with keeping excess water away from the foundation (he’s smart for a non-architect type), so I steered him toward a rain barrel. A rain barrel is a large bucket that you attach your downspouts to. It collects rain water and you hook your hose to it to water the lawn or wash the car. When it fills all the way up, there is an overflow hose that you can divert your extra water away from the house with.

Now there are rain barrels, and there are rain barrels. I couldn’t stand the idea that my brother’s house might have a 55 gallon blue industrial plastic drum at each downspout, so I told him to search for a nice one. I wasn’t expecting for him to find such nice ones and at relatively reasonable prices!