I would run my greywater through it in a heartbeat, but it isn't my house, it's my parents and they aren't too fond of the idea.. i'll probably end up composting in it

I'm with you, Chris ... don't want to spend money where I don't need to ... I'd rather *divert* it to the stuff I really need/want. However, I don't know if letting the rain barrel just overflow is a good idea; maybe it depends on where one lives. We've extended our downspouts out a bit from the house to avoid water problems. It isn't uncommon here to get heavy downpours on frozen earth (sometimes with a nice layer of snow), so if the water is discharged close to the house, naturally it goes where the earth is most pourous, i.e., right next to the foundation. (Glad to see I'm not the only one with household projects hanging ... seems that houses, like gardens, are never finished.)

Actually, the more I think about it, it definitely is a siphoning effect. The water level always drops to around 1/3 when this happens, and I have 3 rain barrels all connected together. Too much of a coincidence for it to ALWAYS drop to 1/3, with me having 3 rain barrels. I have my overflow pipe coming up from the bottom of the middle barrel in the configuration, with a hose connected at the bottom and running into the yard. Ideally, as the water level rises, it hits the upper level of that pipe (inside the barrel) and starts draining out the overflow right down the center of the barrel and into the yard. HOWEVER, my center barrel also happens to be a closed system. Other than the overflow pipe, there is no outlet to exchange air for the water coming into the barrel (the outside barrels both are vented - one with downspout entry, the other with a nail-sized hole on the top). So, when that middle barrel completely fills up (like it does in a downpour), it then completely fills up the overflow pipe and siphoning effect occurs. It then siphons ALL the water out of the outside 2 barrels, until enough water is siphoned out so that the level drops to the top of the overflow pipe in the middle barrel. It then slowly levels out the water from that 1 full barrel to all 3 barrels. That's why it's always roughly 1/3 full after this phenomenon occurs. To fix this, I need to get some air exchange happening in that middle barrel. To do so, I have to eliminate the "closed system" aspect of my middle barrel. I can do that by simply putting a nail-sized hole in the top like I did in the other. I think I'll try that first. Oh, and the reason I didn't see this happen when I tested this before, is that I didn't let the water completely fill high enough and long enough for the siphoning effect to start. It would have been a period of time AFTER the barrels all appeared full. I obviously didn't wait long enough. I think that makes sense to me. Make sense to anybody else?

Just a tip for anyone who is thinking about making his/her own rain barrels. The rain barrels on the website Buford purchased from look really nice; however, we've learned at least one thing the hard way from the experience of making our own and that is not to put the spigot up so high on the barrel. Some of the pictures on the rainbarrelsandmore.com website show the spigots at about the midpoint of the barrel. What happens then is that fully half of the water in the barrel can't get out through the spigot. If you make your own barrel and are putting a water spigot on it, I'd suggest you put the spigot down as low as you can, then put the barrel itself up on top of a sturdy cement block, rock, or board platform that is high enough to allow you to put a bucket or watering can under the spigot. One other thing we've learned is that you really don't get much water pressure from these things, even when they're full of water and lifted up off the ground. In our community garden, we had planned to attach drip hoses to them that would be gravity fed, but they really don't have enough pressure to force the water down through a drip hose. So we water by hand with watering cans. You may wonder when you see the photos, so I'll just say that we're not using these barrels to collect rain, only to distribute water throughout the garden. But there are two things to think about when converting your barrel; 1)how will the water get inside of it and 2)how will you get the water out of it when you need it. From my own personal experience I also recommend cutting a hole in the top that is circular and just about as big in diameter as the barrel. The reason being, it allows you to pretty much climb inside the barrel to clean it out as needed. We've been using our barrels for only one season and I've had to clean algae off the insides quite a few times already. (not just from the inside of the semi-opaque white barrels in the picture but also from the inside of colored ones that the sun doesn't shine through) If you look up how-to directions for rain barrel conversions online, most of them will tell you to cut a smaller, rectangular hole in the top. And (again, my own experience - maybe yours will be better!) in addition to the smaller hole making it harder to keep the inside clean, I also found that opening up the whole top instead of just cutting a small square made it much easier to put in the spigot, and to reach around to put the spigot lower down on the side of the barrel. We're using plastic sheeting tied on top to keep out mosquitos, but if I were collecting rainwater from gutterspouts I think I would use a stiffer aluminum or plastic window screening with a hole cut in that to insert the gutterspout. And in case you're wondering, the plastic sheeting doesn't work that well (eventually cracks up because of sunlight exposure). It was just a cheap and quick fix. I'm hoping to be able to afford to use rolled window screening next year. Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of Homemade water barrels with spigots