Noticed my neighbor's rain barrels had no overflow hose

Ivan Scott · 2026-04-24T05:50:02.85928+00:00

Last summer in Portland I watched a guy lose 30 gallons of collected water during a storm because his barrel overflowed into the dirt instead of his garden. Asked him about it and he said he never thought to add a $5 hose fitting. Has anyone else seen simple setups like that missing basic parts?

allen.kai5mo ago

$5 drill bit and a bulkhead fitting from Home Depot fixed mine in ten minutes.

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vera_johnson95mo ago

That guy saying he never thought to add a hose fitting is exactly the kind of thing that gets me. It's like buying a car and never checking if it has tires. Did he even look at the barrel before he set it up? I mean, a rain barrel without an overflow is just a big bucket waiting to spill. So here's my question for the original guy you saw. What did he actually think was going to happen when it rained hard enough to fill that barrel? Did he really believe the water would just magically vanish into thin air?

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the_lisa5mo ago

Wow it's wild how often people skip the cheap simple fix that makes a whole system work.

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