Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck and Jerry sitting in
Speaker 1: for Dave. And this is short stuff rain barrels. Let's go.
Speaker 2: That's right. I feel like it's twenty ten.
Speaker 1: This is a bit of a throwback. But I know
Speaker 1: very little about rain barrels, and I wanted to learn more,
Speaker 1: and I wanted everybody else to learn more, whether they
Speaker 1: liked it or not.
Speaker 2: That's right. And my quick history of rain barrels is, for.
Speaker 3: A while we were collecting rainwater with the small barrels
Speaker 3: that you attached to your gutter at the edge of
Speaker 3: the house. That ended up kind of a disaster. And
Speaker 3: then at one point we moved to a huge cistern
Speaker 3: system that collected rainwater from all of our gutters leading
Speaker 3: into this one cistern, and that ended up being a nightmare.
Speaker 1: So you've abandoned the rain barrel thing. Huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not doing rain barrels right now.
Speaker 3: But you know we have some other sustainable systems in
Speaker 3: place that are too boring to talk about.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe we will get to your toilets, just go
Speaker 1: water your vegetable paths.
Speaker 2: That's it, nailed it.
Speaker 1: Maybe when we get to the parts where you ran
Speaker 1: into trouble. You can mention it. Nah, let's just get
Speaker 1: to it all right. So we're talking about rain barrels,
Speaker 1: which are essentially just kind of what you said. They're
Speaker 1: cisterns or barrels or whatever that you catch rain water
Speaker 1: in for use in ways that you might find product.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people have been doing this for a long time,
Speaker 3: like thousands and thousands of years. People have been collecting
Speaker 3: rainwater because obviously the cradle of civilization is in very
Speaker 3: arid climate, so rain was very precious commodity back then.
Speaker 1: And still yes, yeah, there's a lot of good reasons
Speaker 1: to use rain water. For one, it's definitely not pure, right.
Speaker 1: It might start out pretty pure, but on its way
Speaker 1: down it picks up all sorts of particles and pollen
Speaker 1: and weird stuff, so it's not drinkable. You don't want
Speaker 1: to collect rain water and then just drinking it unless
Speaker 1: you're in some sort of weird survival situation somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not what you want to do at your
Speaker 1: house with running water. That's perfectly fine. Instead, it's really
Speaker 1: good for things like water in your garden, washing your car,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. The thing is rainwater becomes even
Speaker 1: purer the longer the rain goes, right, so that stuff
Speaker 1: actually kind of gets scrubbed out of the air, and
Speaker 1: later rain can actually be a little cleaner than the
Speaker 1: rain that comes down first. So rainwater is good, is
Speaker 1: the point I'm trying to make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was kind of a fun fact to learn.
Speaker 3: Did not know that rainwater is also usually pretty soft water,
Speaker 3: which is good for flowers and plants, and you know
Speaker 3: tap water. You know, when Emily water is the endoor plant,
Speaker 3: she lets water sit out for like a couple of
Speaker 3: days because I think that eventually cleans up the water some.
Speaker 3: But she never takes tap water and directly waters like
Speaker 3: her houseplants, because of you know, things like chlorine and
Speaker 3: sanitation chemicals that are in that treated water.
Speaker 1: One of those like one drop I think filters that's
Speaker 1: like twenty or thirty bucks for the whole system, and
Speaker 1: it like I've tested the water afterward, and at the
Speaker 1: very least it gets pretty much all the chlorine out
Speaker 1: of tap water, and we use those They last forever.
Speaker 1: It's really great.
Speaker 3: And by tested, you mean you take a big swig
Speaker 3: and go it tastes.
Speaker 1: Good, right, yes, pretty much. Yeah, So one thing also,
Speaker 1: I just want to say real quick about soft water
Speaker 1: is if you have treated soft water, that's not good
Speaker 1: for plants because they treat it with sodium. Rain Water
Speaker 1: is naturally soft, which means it doesn't contain a lot
Speaker 1: of hard minerals a lot of them. It contains some where.
Speaker 2: Did they have soft water on tour? Is that Madison, Wisconsin?
Speaker 1: Yes, dude, my hair is still has zero volume or
Speaker 1: body from our show in Madison in mid April.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my liver has extra volume and body because of
Speaker 3: my Madison experience.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great, all right.
Speaker 3: So collecting rain water is also good for the local
Speaker 3: ecology because rainwater not being diverted into that muni system
Speaker 3: is gonna stay in the lakes and rivers obviously, which
Speaker 3: is a great thing for the local wildlife for sure.
Speaker 3: And if you're harvesting rainwater, you're reducing the amount of
Speaker 3: the rainwater runoff, which can be bad. You know, that
Speaker 3: initial dirty rainwater, It could be like not great for
Speaker 3: lakes and streams.
Speaker 1: No, because your sewers probably get directed the rainstorm water
Speaker 1: drains get directed right to brooks creeks lakes even sometimes
Speaker 1: if you can believe it, and that stuff picks up
Speaker 1: all the oil, all the anti freeze, all the tar,
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and just takes it to those streams
Speaker 1: and brooks and lakes with it. And also excess fertilizer
Speaker 1: we've talked about plenty of times that gets taken to
Speaker 1: waterways and can support algae blooms that kill off everything
Speaker 1: from other plant life to fish. So it's any rainwater
Speaker 1: that you're removing from the runoff is good. The thing
Speaker 1: is is almost not even worth mentioning because you're removing
Speaker 1: such an insignificant amount that if everybody were doing this
Speaker 1: it would have a huge impact. But you're not really
Speaker 1: going to You can still feel good about it, though.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: I think we should take a break, okay, and we're
Speaker 3: gonna come right back and hopefully talk very little about
Speaker 3: math if I can talk Josh into it right after.
Speaker 2: This sv.
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, it's time for some math.
Speaker 2: I mean, please just say and not work your way
Speaker 2: through this equation.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, let's find out how it goes. So essentially,
Speaker 1: you need to figure out how much water you're going
Speaker 1: to get, right.
Speaker 2: Well, not really, I mean you could just collect rainwater
Speaker 2: and use it.
Speaker 1: But sure, Well, let's say you're a math buff But
Speaker 1: you're terrible at math, and you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how much rainwater you're going to be able to collect.
Speaker 1: It's actually very simple. All you have to do is
Speaker 1: figure out the square footage of your roof, because your
Speaker 1: roof actss the water catchment, and the water that hits
Speaker 1: your roof is going to flow eventually into your rain barrel. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's say that you have a twelve hundred square
Speaker 1: foot roof, right, you will get seven hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: gallons of water from one inch of rainfall, oh, just
Speaker 1: from having that roof. Right. And I arrived at that
Speaker 1: figure by taking the width of the roof, multiplying it
Speaker 1: by the length of the roof, and you got the
Speaker 1: square footage of the roof, and then multiplying that number
Speaker 1: the square footage by point six, which is the portion
Speaker 1: of the gallon that will be harvested from one inch
Speaker 1: of rainwater falling on one square foot of your roof.
Speaker 1: And like I said, if you have twelve hundred square
Speaker 1: feet of roof, that's going to yield seven hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty gallons.
Speaker 2: Man, you were right there.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I think you want people to click the stop button.
Speaker 1: Or maybe just skip forward a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hey, that's an option.
Speaker 3: By the way, everybody, if you're still with us, you
Speaker 3: don't have to stop listening, just fifteen seconds at a time.
Speaker 2: I think it is so.
Speaker 1: I never make dry jokes to fool you, but I do.
Speaker 1: I did just do math to make you scortin for sure.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know, all right.
Speaker 3: So we need to talk roofs though, because it depends
Speaker 3: on what kind of roof you have as to like
Speaker 3: how great that water is going to be.
Speaker 2: If you've got like a brand.
Speaker 3: New asbestos tard asphalt shingled roof, you're probably not going
Speaker 3: to like love that rain water.
Speaker 2: It's not great treated cedar shakes or lovely.
Speaker 3: But they are treated with stuff that you're not gonna want,
Speaker 3: like arsenick to keep them from riding. Obviously galvanized metal.
Speaker 3: Some people say, like, that's probably the best thing, right,
Speaker 3: What do you say.
Speaker 1: Probably not, because most metal roofs are treated with a
Speaker 1: protective coating that's made of peafasts, so that's going to
Speaker 1: get right into your water too. It turns out that
Speaker 1: slate tiles, terra cotta tiles, or ceramic roof tiles are
Speaker 1: probably the best they're going to contribute the least amount
Speaker 1: of extra stuff when you gotta be rich. Yeah, pretty much,
Speaker 1: it sounds like.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, yeah, those are all like super expensive roofs, right, Yes.
Speaker 1: All three of them are, for sure. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is true if you think about it,
Speaker 1: you don't want to use asphalt shingles to catch rain
Speaker 1: with unless chuck you have a good filter, and they
Speaker 1: definitely make those kinds of things, because there are some
Speaker 1: things you want to keep in mind when you're choosing
Speaker 1: a rain barrel, but one of them is you need
Speaker 1: a filter of some sort.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, I mean some people can spend a ton of
Speaker 3: money on like a really nice filtration system and like
Speaker 3: a pump system if you want to like turn this
Speaker 3: into like you know, hosable water. Yeah, because otherwise, you know,
Speaker 3: you got to figure that out too, because you got
Speaker 3: a lot of water and men, you know that rain
Speaker 3: comes down quickly and those things overflow very fast and
Speaker 3: fill up very quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's actually an overflow mechanism, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's really elaborate ones, but at the very least you
Speaker 1: want one that goes from pretty much the top of
Speaker 1: the rain barrel into a down spout, so that when
Speaker 1: that rain barrel fills up, it's going to overflow into
Speaker 1: a down spout where it's supposed to go, rather than
Speaker 1: through the top of the rain barrel and right down
Speaker 1: into your foundation. You don't want that. So that's something
Speaker 1: that you definitely want to have in any rain barrel
Speaker 1: set up, or else you're going to be crying all
Speaker 1: the way to ram Jack, you know.
Speaker 2: So that is ram Jack.
Speaker 1: It's a foundation repair company.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: The other thing you're gonna want is a good lid
Speaker 3: for that thing. It's not just like an open system.
Speaker 3: If you've never seen a rain barrel, they have lids
Speaker 3: because it keeps all the debris out and the bugs out.
Speaker 3: You don't want like a small child crawling into a
Speaker 3: rain barrel because that could be very sad. Yeah, obviously,
Speaker 3: and you want to keep some light out because I
Speaker 3: think you talked about the algae growth in Act one,
Speaker 3: and also mosquitos. You don't want mosquitos laying their larvae
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 1: No, you should go to jail if you're breeding mosquitoes.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have.
Speaker 3: I'd love it because one of our fence walls is
Speaker 3: completely over the years now. Ivy like beautiful Wrigley Field
Speaker 3: ivy and it looks so cool, but it is a
Speaker 3: mosquito nightmare and we're gonna have to get rid of it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sorry that your ivy's gonna have to go away,
Speaker 1: but I don't blame you one bit. If it were
Speaker 1: a mosquito factory, a mosquito factory, I'd have to deal
Speaker 1: with that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really bad. So what else?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did talk about filters. They make UV lights
Speaker 3: that can kill bacteria.
Speaker 1: What about the bacteria? Though?
Speaker 2: Very nice touche as they say.
Speaker 1: Thanks, that's French for touch.
Speaker 2: What else?
Speaker 3: You don't want to drink this water? I hope we've
Speaker 3: made that clear. But you know, if you can find
Speaker 3: a way to pump it, you could wash your car
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 1: You could. You can also use it to grow plants, obviously, flowers,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. If you use it in a
Speaker 1: vegetable garden or fruit garden, you do not want to
Speaker 1: use it within probably a week or so. I might
Speaker 1: even give myself a wider berth than that of harvesting,
Speaker 1: because those things are gonna suck it like any pollutant
Speaker 1: in that's in that rainwater and you're gonna put it
Speaker 1: right into your body. You certainly don't want to rinse
Speaker 1: the vegetables off with that. You want to rinse it
Speaker 1: off with You want to basically put your vegetables in
Speaker 1: a bucket of just pure bleach for several days before
Speaker 1: you get them out and eat them.
Speaker 3: No, Josh is kidding. Everybody, don't get us canceled ensued.
Speaker 3: That is not true. That is not true.
Speaker 2: Thanks, what else here? I can't believe we've been talking
Speaker 2: about this for almost fourteen minutes. You got to clean
Speaker 2: that filter regularly.
Speaker 3: You have to inspect that thing, got to keep that
Speaker 3: lid tight, watch out for leaks, keep those gutters clean.
Speaker 2: I just got mind cleaned.
Speaker 1: What if you live in a freezing type area?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that can crack that rain barrel. You
Speaker 3: gotta check it out on the rig.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus also you need to winnorize it, which is
Speaker 1: basically unhooking it from everything and like emptying it. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna.
Speaker 2: Get and putting it in your bedroom exactly.
Speaker 1: I feel like I wasn't one hundred percent clear on
Speaker 1: the math, and it might help for me to go
Speaker 1: over it one more time.
Speaker 2: I think we totally should I'll see it next week.
Speaker 1: Okay, well short stuff is that.
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