The $30 Part That Keeps Rain Barrel Water Clean No Filter, No Chemicals

Built to Last — keeping a home warm, fed, watered & mended the old way: https://ezrakaine.com How do you keep rain barrel water clean without a filter or chemicals? You throw away the first few gallons of every storm, and a $30 first flush diverter does it for you. Two jars. Same roof, same rain, twenty minutes apart. The first came off my roof in the first minute of Tuesday's storm, and that brown isn't mud. It's pollen, shingle grit, rotted oak leaves and a week of whatever the birds left on the ridge. The second is the same roof, the same downspout, twenty minutes later. If you've got a rain barrel with nothing between it and the gutter, the first jar is what you've been pouring on your tomatoes. Your barrel doesn't get dirty from the rain. It gets dirty from the first ten gallons of it. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN • Why the first rain off any roof is the dirtiest water you'll ever catch • How many gallons your roof needs to dump — thirty seconds with a tape measure • How a first flush diverter works, and why it empties itself between storms • Building one from 4-inch drain pipe, a cap and a T for about $30 • What goes wrong: the plugged hole, the overflow, and winter freezing • What rain barrel water is good for — and what it isn't One thing plain: a diverter makes barrel water a great deal cleaner. It does not make it safe to drink. This is water for the garden, the chickens and goats, tools, boots and the truck. If you want to drink water you caught yourself, that's a different tool — the $2 sand-and-charcoal filter I built here: [paste link to the $2 creek water filter video] Tell me in the comments — did anybody in your family have a cistern? Where was it, and who went out in the rain to tend it? The rain was always clean. It was the roof that needed rinsing. Next time I'll run that same barrel out to the garden with no pump and no power at all, and water a whole bed while you sleep. #RainBarrel #FirstFlushDiverter #RainwaterHarvesting #DIY #OffGridWater #Homesteading #OldWaysAreBest #Gardening #SelfReliance #WaterCatchment #RainwaterCollection #OffGridLiving