If I’m going to spend the time and effort blogging for work, I might as well copy it here, right?

I’m all about saving the planet, especially if it keeps some cash in my pocket. So the initial investment of a rain barrel seemed like a good idea.

Even though the jury is still out on various and “green” web sites on whether or not a rain barrel will save significant amounts on your water bill, there are other benefits. First off, the geniuses that built our house didn’t put a spigot on the front or side of the house. So, the plan is to toss in some ingenuity and let Mother Nature be our own spigot, while also (hopefully) alleviating some of the soggyness on that side of our house.

Thus ends the easy part of our adventure.

The instructions and the smiley, environmentally-sound salespeople make it sound like a snap. Toss the barrel onto the lawn, do a rain dance and watch the water savings roll. Um, no. Two weeks of staring at the barrel in the living room-turned- and quot;listening lounge and quot; (where the average annual rainfall is less than zero), followed by two afternoons of digging, propping, bungee-ing, hacksawing and jiggering to and fro, and we might have a rain barrel in service.

First issue was that the barrel and “must be placed on a level surface and failure to do so may result in the barrel tipping over and serious harm done to people, pets or property”. I don’t know how much 60 gallons of water weighs, but I don’t want to find out from a hospital chart. So my wife and I created an impromptu platform out of paving bricks (and a whole lot of trial-and-error). Fortunately, the clay-based ground that has made gardening a nightmare makes for a pretty solid brick foundation. Tree roots, however, don’t help. My eternal apologies to the ornamental pear tree next to our house, but that root had to go. (The tree will really hate me when I finally get up the desire to climb ladders and hack away wayward branches. This root thing will seem like a flu shot.)

Pedestal accomplished and the homestretch in sight, we lined up the rain diverter, which and quot;simply goes in by cutting out a 9-inch section of downspout and quot; and inserting the diverter. Today’s homeowner lesson is that hacksawing downspouts is about as easy as chewing a bad cut of steak, just not as tasty. Sure, once you get through the face of the pipe, it’s easy…until you get to the back end. More apologies go out to the new hacksaw blade and that corner of house that took a few hits.

Finally, around 12:45 Sunday afternoon, our job seemed complete. Of course, three-plus inches of rain over the weekend would have made it nice to have up a few days earlier, but if I have to stand on the roof with a garden hose, this barrel will get its water, and I will have saved the planet.

Of course, a week later, who knew that replacing a $20 blower resistor in my car would make the rain barrel adventure feel like light-to-moderate stretching?