Thanks everyone for your comments and suggests (and stories). As some
of you have stated how you use the rain barrels for gardens, please
understand that I'm only planning to use this to water a few bushes
and flowers around my house. By the way, I leave in the Dallas/Fort
Worth area and as far as roof size, the house is about 5000 sq ft (2
stories). I'm hoping that it will not take much rain to fill the
barrels. The barrels will be connected together so that once the
first one fills, it will overflow into the second, and once the second
one fills, it will overflow into the third. The third barrel will
simply overflow into the yard (out from the house). One thing I
didn't take into consideration was the fact that dirt will fill the
bottom of the barrels. I was thinking of having hoses connected to
the bottom of each barrel have having all three flow down into one
hose. This way I would be able to obtain water from all three
barrels. My orginal idea was to place an in-line pump on the hose
leading from the three barrel to provide added PSI for the drip hoses
located on the other side of the house.

As far as alge, the barrel are made of thick, black plastic. The
water going into the barrels would come from a downspout diverter
(with manual control). I'm hoping that the manual control will allow
me to divert the water after waiting a few minutes to allow the dirt
from the roof to wash away.


thanks again for your comments.