I've had four 55 gallon plastic rain barrels sitting full of water for several years now. Three of them are full of water even now in late summer because, well, I don't have a good way to get the water out. There's not much point in having rain barrels that you can fill up, but that you can't empty!
I do have a plastic hand pump that I can use to get the water started, but the threads on the pump are unknown to me - they certainly aren't the same thread that's on a garden hose. So I end up just pumping the water out into a 5 gallon bucket and carrying it out to the flower beds. Good exercise I guess, but honestly, I'm not as tough as my 80+ year old mother who still works like she's in her 30s!
So I got the bright idea that I'd get me a good pump this summer and actually use that water on the front flowerbeds. As always, I turned to the all-knowing "The Google" to help me find something. Here's what it came up with.
I was pretty excited that it said the threads on the pump would accept a standard garden hose, and $17.99 didn't seem like too bad of a price, especially when you got free shipping. So I decided to just go ahead and order one.
After some unexplained delays in shipping, the little pump finally arrived. It seemed like it was well made and I was excited to be able to finally use the rain barrels! I took the little pump out that same evening, threaded it into the top of one of my barrels, assembled the pump handle and hooked up the garden hose.
But wait...something wasn't quite right. The hose didn't seem to want to tighten up on the pump. It appeared to thread on, but when it got to the end where it should be tight, POP! It was loose again.
Maybe it just needed a different washer. I tried a new washer, tried double-stacked washers, and still, the same result. POP!
Well, it would probably work even it if was slightly loose, I thought, so I snugged the hose right up to the popping point, then pumped the lever to get the water flowing. I walked out to the end of the 100 ft. hose...nothing. Back to the barrel, a few more pumps, and back to the end of the hose. Nothing.
By that time, I was beginning to feel a bit more than aggravated. I gave the pump handle about two dozen good pumps, and that time, I did get water out the end of the hose. Seemed like it was going to work. Happy dance!
But within about five minutes the water slowed to a trickle and then stopped. What I finally figured out is that without a good tight seal at the pump, air was being drawn into the hose causing it to lose prime. I could get it going by pumping, but the result was always the same...water ran out at first, but got slower and slower then stopped.
The lower the water got in the barrel, the shorter time between when I got it going and when it stopped. Why was that? Well, it's PHYSICS, I finally told my dumb ol' self. The water is having to travel UP the length of the pump before it makes its turn back down to flow out the hose. When the barrel is full, there's lots of pressure on top helping force it up into the pump (since water weights about 8 lbs/gallon, that's 55 x 8 or 440lbs of pressure, right?). But the lower the water gets, the less pressure there is to help out, and with the air leak at the hose connection, the gravity just can't maintain enough negative pressure inside the hose to keep it going.
Sadly, the little metal pump turned out to be a bust. Back to square one.
Or perhaps I should say on to square two. I read a bit and shopped around some more, and finally settled on this brass rain barrel spigot from Amazon. I'll have to drill a hole in the bottom of my barrel, and will have to use my electrical fish tape to get the inside fitting down into the barrel, but no more pumping...just connect the hose, open the spigot, and let gravity do the rest!
But first, I guess I need to to make sure the hose threads onto the spigot.....
