Short Stuff: Rain Barrels!

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1:09Hey, everybody. It's Josh and Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave, and this is Short Stuff Rain Barrels. Let's go.

1:16Josh Clark:That's right. I feel like it's 2010. tin. This is a bit of a throwback, but I know very little about rain barrels and I wanted to learn more and I wanted everybody else to learn more, whether they liked it or not. That's right. My quick history of rain barrels is for a while we were collecting rainwater with the small barrels that you attach to your gutter at the edge of the house. That ended up kind of a disaster. And then at one point we moved to a huge cistern system that collected rainwater from all of our gutters leading into this one cistern, and that ended up being a nightmare. So you've abandoned the rain barrel thing, huh?

1:55Josh Clark:Yeah, we're not doing rain barrels right now, but, you know, we have some other sustainable systems in place that are too boring to talk about. Well, maybe we will get to your flush toilets, just go water your vegetable back. That's it. Nailed it. Maybe when we get to the parts where you ran into trouble, you can mention it. Nah, let's just get to it. All right. So we're talking about rain barrels, which are essentially just kind of what you said. They're cisterns or barrels or whatever that you catch rainwater in for use in ways that you might find productive. Yeah. People have been doing this for a long time, like thousands and thousands of years.

2:34Josh Clark:People have been collecting rainwater because obviously the cradle of civilization is in very arid climate. So rain was very precious commodity back then and still. Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of good reasons to use rainwater. For one, it's definitely not pure, right? It might start out pretty pure, but on its way down, it picks up all sorts of particles and pollen and weird stuff. So it's not drinkable. You don't want to collect rainwater and then just start drinking it unless you're in some sort of weird survival situation somewhere. This is not what you want to do at your house with running water.

3:12That's perfectly fine. Instead, it's really good for things like watering your garden, washing your car, that kind of stuff. The thing is, rainwater becomes even purer the longer the rain goes, right? So that stuff actually kind of gets scrubbed out of the air. And later rain can actually be a little cleaner than the rain that comes down first. So rainwater is good is the point I'm trying to make.

3:36Josh Clark:Yeah, that was kind of a fun fact to learn. Did not know that. Rainwater is also usually pretty soft water, which is good for flowers and plants. and you know tap water you know when Emily waters the indoor plant she lets water sit out for like a couple of days because I think that eventually cleans up the water some but she never takes tap water and directly waters like her house plants no because of you know things like chlorine and sanitation chemicals that are in that treated water we have one of those like one drop I think filters that's like 20 or 30 bucks for the whole system. And it, like I've tested the water afterward.

4:15And at the very least, it gets pretty much all the chlorine out of tap water. And we use those. They last forever. It's really great.

4:21Josh Clark:And by tested, you mean you take a big swig and go, it tastes good. Right. Yes, pretty much. Yeah. So one thing also I just want to say real quick about soft water is if you have treated soft water, that's not good for plants because they treat it with sodium. Rainwater is naturally soft, which means it doesn't contain a lot of hard minerals. A lot of them, it contains some. Where did they have soft water on tour? Was that Madison, Wisconsin? Yes, dude. My hair is still has zero volume or body from our show in Madison in mid-April. Yeah. My liver has extra volume and body because of my Madison experience.

5:00Josh Clark:It's pretty great. All right. So collecting rainwater is also good for the local ecology because rainwater not being diverted into that muni system is going to stay in the lakes and rivers, obviously, which is a great thing for the local wildlife. For sure. And if you're harvesting rainwater, you're reducing the amount of the rainwater runoff, which can be bad. You know, that initial dirty rainwater can be like not great for lakes and streams. No, because your sewers probably get directed, the rainstorm water drains get directed right to brooks, creeks, lakes even sometimes, if you can believe it.

5:39And that stuff picks up all the oil, all the antifreeze, all the tar, all that stuff, and just takes it to those streams and brooks and lakes with it. And also excess fertilizer, we've talked about plenty of times, that gets taken to waterways and can support algae blooms that kill off everything from other plant life to fish. So any rainwater that you're removing from the runoff is good. The thing is, it's almost not even worth mentioning because you're removing such an insignificant amount that if everybody were doing this, it would have a huge impact. But you're not really going to. You can still feel good about it, though.

6:17Josh Clark:That's right. I think we should take a break. Okay. And we're going to come right back and hopefully talk very little about math, if I can talk Josh into it, right after this.

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8:23Okay, Chuck, it's time for some math.

8:27Josh Clark:I mean, please just say and not work your way through this equation, right? Well, let's find out how it goes. So essentially, you need to figure out how much water you're going to get, right? Well, not really. I mean, you could just collect rainwater and use it, but sure. Well, let's say you're a math buff, but you're terrible at math, and you're trying to figure out how much rainwater you're going to be able to collect. It's actually very simple. All you have to do is figure out the square footage of your roof because your roof acts as the water catchment. And the water that hits your roof is going to flow eventually into your rain barrel, right?

9:03So let's say that you have a 1 ,200 square foot roof. Don't do it. Right? You will get 720 gallons of water from one inch of rainfall. Oh, yeah. Just from having that roof, right? And I arrived at that figure by taking the width of the roof, multiplying it by the length of the roof, and you get the square footage of the roof. And then multiplying that number, the square footage, by 0.6, which is the portion of the gallon that will be harvested from one inch of rainwater falling on one square foot of your roof. And like I said, if you have 1 ,200 square feet of roof, that's going to yield 720 gallons.

9:44Josh Clark:Man, you were right there. Sometimes I think you want people to click the stop button. Or maybe just skip forward a little bit. Yeah. Hey, that's an option, by the way, everybody, if you're still with us. You don't have to stop listening. Just 15 seconds at a time, I think it is. So I never make dry jokes to fool you, but I did just do math to make you squirm for sure. Oh, I know. Okay. All right. So we need to talk roofs, though, because it depends on what kind of roof you have as to, like, how great that water is going to be. If you've got like a brand new asbestos tarred asphalt shingled roof, you're probably not going to like love that rainwater.

10:23Josh Clark:It's not great. Treated cedar shakes are lovely, but they are treated with stuff that you're not going to want, like arsenic to keep them from rotting, obviously. Galvanized metal, some people say like that's probably the best thing, right? What do you say? Probably not because most metal roofs are treated with a protective coating that's made of PFAS. So that's going to get right into your water, too. It turns out that slate tiles, terracotta tiles or ceramic roof tiles are probably the best. They're going to contribute the least amount of extra stuff. So you got to be rich. Yeah, pretty much.

10:59It sounds like unfortunately.

11:01Josh Clark:Yeah, those are like super expensive roofs, right? Yes. All three of them are for sure. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is true. If you think about it, you don't want to use asphalt shingles to catch rain with unless, Chuck, You have a good filter and they definitely make those kind of things because there are some things you want to keep in mind when you're choosing a rain barrel. But one of them is you need a filter of some sort. Yeah. I mean, some people can spend a ton of money on like a really nice filtration system and like a pump system. If you want to like turn this into like, you know, hosable water or sprayable water.

11:36Yeah.

11:36Josh Clark:Because otherwise, you know, you got to figure that out, too, because you got a lot of water. And man, you know, that rain comes down quickly and those things overflow very fast and fill up very quickly. Yeah. So there's actually an overflow mechanism. I'm sure there's really elaborate ones. But at the very least, you want one that goes from pretty much the top of the rain barrel into a downspout so that when that rain barrel fills up, it's going to overflow into a downspout where it's supposed to go rather than through the top of the rain barrel and right down into your foundation. You don't want that.

12:07So that's something that you definitely want to have in any rain barrel setup or else you're going to be crying all the way to Ram Jack. You know? So what the hell is Ram Jack? It's a foundation repair company.

12:22Josh Clark:Okay. The other thing you're going to want is a good lid for that thing. It's not just like an open system. If you've never seen a rain barrel, they have lids because it keeps all the debris out and the bugs out. You don't want like a small child crawling into a rain barrel because that could be very sad. Yeah. obviously. And you want to keep sunlight out because I think you talked about the algae growth in Act One and also mosquitoes. You don't want mosquitoes laying their larvae in there. No. You should go to jail if you're breeding mosquitoes, you know? Yeah, we have. I love it because one of our fence walls is completely over the years now, ivy, like beautiful Wrigley Field ivy.

13:04Josh Clark:And it looks so cool, but it is a mosquito nightmare, and we're going to have to get rid of it. Well, I'm sorry that your ivy is going to have to go away, but I don't blame you one bit. If it were a mosquito factory, if I had a mosquito factory, I'd have to deal with that too. Yeah, it's really bad. So what else? Oh, yeah, I did talk about filters. They make UV lights that can kill bacteria. What about the bacteria, though?

13:30uh very nice touche touche as they say thanks that's french for touch uh what else you don't

13:37Josh Clark:want to drink this water i hope we've made that clear um but you know if you can find a way to pump it you could wash your car with it you could uh you can also use it to grow plants obviously flowers that kind of thing if you use it in a vegetable garden or a fruit garden you do not want to use it within probably a week or so, I would might even give myself a wider berth than that of harvesting because those things are going to suck it like any pollutant in that's in that rainwater and you're going to put it right into your body. You certainly don't want to rinse the vegetables off with that.

14:11You want to rinse it off with, you want to basically put your vegetables in a bucket of just pure bleach for several days before you get them out and eat them.

14:21Josh Clark:No, Josh is kidding, everybody. Don't get us canceled and sued. That is not true. That is not true. Thanks. What else here? I can't believe we've been talking about this for almost 14 minutes. You've got to clean that filter regularly. You have to inspect that thing. Got to keep that lid tight. Watch out for leaks. Keep those gutters clean. I just got mine cleaned. What if you live in a freezing-type area? Yeah, I mean, that can crack that rain barrel. You've got to check it out on the reg. Yeah, plus also you need to winterize it, which is basically unhooking it from everything and like emptying it.

14:57Sorry, you're not confused. Yeah, putting it in your bedroom. Exactly. I feel like I wasn't 100 % clear on the math and it might help for me to go over it one more time.

15:07Josh Clark:I think we totally should. I'll see you next week. Okay, well, short stuff is out.

15:14Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.