Back In June I Made an Obelisk!

So I haven't posted about this yet. I made an Obelisk! Yup, and it's working great!! SO I made a rain barrel to catch rain water, but the gutter going to it was always in the way of the lawn mower and was right where you want to walk too. 

So here's the obelisk at work just the other day.....

 I bought one by one lumber-the pressure treated kind, for the four corners and then I used one by 2 pieces to make the cross parts.

All I had to do was build two sides that were the same,

Well you know me, the picture of perfection...snort..... mostly the same.

 I used short screws to put the whole thing together and I pee-drilled all the holes, because it seems like no matter what i do, I end up splitting the wood if I don't pre-drill.

 SO I made the two sides the same and the, since I was going to have this obelisk hold up my down spout, and the place it was going to stand is on the hill, I made one side of the lower legs shorter than the other!

 Here's the obelisk taking shape.

 I think if I have to do this again I might figure out how to miter those corners...but then again, it's only holding the downspout to the water barrel, so maybe not.

 And here it is!

 This was back in June, before I got tied up with other projects!

The obelisk has been working well all summer now! I made it tall enough so that people can walk under the downspout and the mower can get through there too!

 And the water barrel has been filled all summer! We've had a lot of rain.

Shopping and Rain Barrels

SO I get a puddle of cruddy muddy water in front of my garage pedestrian door every time it rains. This is because my gutter downspout lets water run into the driveway. I had a genius idea to install a rain barrel to collect the water...it's an environmentally happy thing to do-rain barrels can alleviate erosion, provide gardeners with water, and lessen runoff from paved surfaces. See? SO I got me a drum from my work.

 And then I made a level spot on the hillside across from my current downspout.

 I dug out some of the hillside, thinking this would also be a little higher up and help out the gravity when I wanted to use some water. So I was happy with this idea and moved on to re routing the gutter downspout.

 Here it is on the North side of the garage-and it allows water to run right into the driveway and garage. It's impossible to keep the gutter that runs to the ground in place because when the lawn gets mowed the extension gets knock off or removed. It crosses the best place to walk to the backyard and is a trip hazard too.

 SO I un screwed the holders so I could re use them to hold the curved parts in place. See, I added the outlet going towards the place I made for the barrel. Looks good!

 Here's the temporary lay out.
I stuck a post in the ground to hold the gutter in about the right place for a nice slope-it looks pretty bad appearance wise, but I think I have the right idea. Now I need to go to town and get the faucet and fitting for the barrel. I won't go into the details of how frustrating it is to try to find something at Lowe's when the folks who work there have no idea what a rain barrel is. There's a reason I love on line shopping-no long line, no uneducated sales people, no out of stocks!  Let's just be aware that I ordered it on Amazon!

 So I got my package from Amazon on Tuesday! It came with the hole driller bit and the faucet along with the fittings I needed. It was about $16-free Prime shipping YES!

 So I chose the place I wanted to put the hole-I based this on the fact that it was all the further I could reach into the drum! I knew I would need to be able to reach inside there to fit it together!

 The hole was easy to drill with my handy power drill!

 See, here's the faucet and the fitting.

 I tightened the fitting-it's threaded backwards FYI, and then screwed in the faucet.

 Good to go there-I'm going to live dangerously and hope it doesn't leak.

 Now for the lid. I bought this flexible plastic downspout at Menard's, it was on sale for something like $6 I think. I traced the shape around and then drilled a hole to use my jigsaw to cut it out. Easy peasy. I wanted a good tight fit to keep bugs and crud out.

 Then I drilled one last hole near the top to serve as an overflow outlet. I might need to add some kind of spout to this but for now we'll see how this goes.

 And here's the final fit test in place.

 I added a bit of window screen in the space between the aluminum gutter and the plastic flexible downspout to catch twigs and crud. I don't want stuff to clog up the faucet on the drum.

 I've still got the temporary post holding it up. If it all works out well, then I'll build a nice trestle like trellis to hold it in place and look pretty.

The gutter is high enough so a person can walk under and the lawn mower can pass by with no problem. Now it looks like it's going to rain again today so I'm ready for the test!!