Customer Reviews

Achla Designs RB-02 Green Rain Barrel - 75 Gallon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought four of these a while ago. Because of the crazy price we paid for them, we take good care of them and bring them in every winter. The hose system they provide is worthless and has to be replaced with something more durable. And the screen top they provide gives out after awhile and there is no easy way to replace it. They use "plastic rivets" (for lack of a better way to describe it) and so we will have to come up with a way to replace and re-rivet it. When I bought these, they were $119. I would NEVER consider paying $159. for one. There's no reason for them to be this expensive.

It lasted four years. Then the hose spout broke off with a simple tug of the hose. Now there's just a flat open hole in the side where the hose should connect.
During its short life, the hose repeatedly fell off the spout despite all efforts to tighten the cheap radiator hose style screw clamp. Hose falling off means dumping out all the stored water. Not a pleasant experience.
The flimsy overflow hose died of sun exposure a few years ago despite the fact that the barrel is mostly shaded throughout the day.
What a ripoff.

The hose / barrel interface is so poorly designed it WILL leak and what good is a water barrel that won't hold water? The indentation where the hose is attached makes it impossible to get a screw driver on a clamp to try a fix it without taking the water out and turning the barrel upside down. The hose they give you is so ridged that using it has the effect of ripping it off the little, short pipe. I'm going to have to fix this.

My fisrt attempt will create a new hose system on the existing exit pipe using a short, extremely flexible piece of hose to attach to the barrel that will not streess the connection when it used.

If that doesn't work I'll try revising their little interface connection or plugging it and making a new one.

Don't buy this product.

I live in southern California and have 4 of these this size, and one of the smaller ones, I still need to buy more!

I felt it was unfair this product had such a low rating, since most of the problems are due to water freezing....if you are in parts of the country without that issue, this is a great product, I collected 600+ gal last year on two barrels...this year I hope to really up that amount.

The valve at the end of the hose will leak...that said, its like $3 to go buy a better one at home depot. I splurged and purchased nice metal ones for like $5..

the overflow "tube' they give you is useless...it kinks...that said, The barrels are not in a place when the overflow matters...If you put the barrel in a place where it matters, just put a brick down to splash the water...no brainer..

my oldest one is 3 years old, and has withstood full sun/uv and looks new. We get 115 deg days and sun that burns the plants and the barrel is fine..

make sure you place cinderblocks under it to lift it a bit, or else it will be hard to get the last of the water out.

anyway, I wish every home would do this...its such a brilliant idea.

I came to amazon looking for a replacement screen for one of my barrels. It didn't break, I lost it somehow over the winter. So far no problems with the barrels so I was surprised at the number of negative reviews. Maybe I've been lucky. I would purchase again.