Motivation: I'm lazy and don't want to lug buckets of water all around the yard to water my plants. So, I built a wooden stand for my rain barrels to sit on. This way they have a good head of pressure.

Background:

One gallon of water weighs about 8.6 pounds. With a total capacity of 120 gallons in the two barrels, I calculated this to be 1020 pounds. That's a lot of weight so I couldn't just throw together some 2x4s and expect them to hold the rain barrels up for very long. And, I'm a Zander so this stand is well built and will no doubt last quite a few years. As with the other parts of this project, plans, pictures and further details are coming but here's a picture of the stand to give you an idea.

The whole thing is built from high quality pressure treated lumber. All six legs are 4x4's and the rest of it 1x6's Each set of 2 legs has a 1x6 "beam" across the top (perpendicular to the decking in the picture). The sides are bolted to the legs with lag bolts and to prevent rot each leg is on a plastic stand-off. I tried to find the more "traditional" aluminum stand-offs but found them difficult and expensive to obtain and also learned (should have known but didn't think...) that the copper in the wood will gave a galvanic reaction with the aluminum and eat it away. Same thing with aluminum siding - can't use treated lumber against aluminum siding.

After building this I painted it with 2 coats of wood sealer. It's only a few months old right now and the tanks are full and frozen solid but I haven't seen any problems. If I ever do have to rebuild this, I'll consider welding a proper steel frame instead of using wood.

Coming in the future: diagrams, materials, building instructions and more photos.