Sunday, January 24, 2010

Lessons Learned

Every year, since getting the rain barrels, I have dutifully drained them, disconnected them, and placed them upside down under our eaves.  This year, time got away from me and it grew cold so I never bothered to take on the yearly winterizing.  I heard that other folks with barrels left them out so why not see what happens.

Well, this is what happens:

It looks like the rear barrel, filled with water, froze into a solid block of ice.  The bottom of the barrel expanded, so it fell off of it's platform.  It actually looks more like it committed "rain barrel suicide" and jumped off.  From what I can tell, the barrel is still in one piece, though the spigot is broken.  Now I have to wait until the sucker melts so I can move it back.  Given the size of the ice, I am guessing this could take until March.

The front barrel is still out and has had no problems.  I wonder if I should take advantage of this weekend's heat wave and bring it in.

3 comments:

Andy said...

Hmmm...interesting. I wonder if mine has exploded...I don't believe it's committed rain barrel suicide.

I decided to leave mine out and open, but I opened the bottom spigot to keep pressure relieved and water from building up. Yes, I understand that it doesn't "save" water that way, but I don't have anything to water right now anyway. :) I hope mine's doing OK...maybe I'll check on it tomorrow, having seen what happened to yours...

OneSeedChicago said...

That looks like what happens when you leave a 2 liter plastic soda bottle in the freezer for too long.

Good luck with getting that thing to melt. Once the weather warms up you should consider moving (rolling?) it to a sunnier spot and see if it helps speedup the process.

TaraB said...

I think i'm gonna get me one of these for the year.