So we have two rain barrels on either side of the house that work fantastically well for gathering water to be used for our small victory garden. The only problem with the barrels was that they were too close to the ground so the head pressure wasn’t all that great and it was a pain to get hose attachments on and off. So with some scrap wood I had lying around and gratuitous thievery of the design from this site I built one that would put the barrel up about 3 feet or so.

So the first thing was to take the 4×4’s that were going to form up the legs and cut them all the same length.

Second we want to frame up the legs. The boards I used were a bit sketchy, but with the amount of reinforcement we are putting on it’ll be ok.

The bottom braces are important as they square the legs up to the frame and keep things from shifting. I raised them about a 2×4’s width off the ground so they wouldn’t draw in water off the ground if the legs sunk a bit. 50 gallons is about 400 lbs, so while it might want to sink, I’m also putting this thing on pavers to keep it from sinking / drawing water up into the 4×4’s.

Internal cross members get screwed in from the outside, with the far ends getting screwed to the 4×4’s as well. These are about the width of a 2×4 apart as well, I fudged a little in the middle since it wasn’t exact. This aint rocket science.

I put the barrel on some additional 2×4’s – the original designed called for the barrel to be inside the lip of the 2×6’s to keep it from sliding off but for me that made the nozzle come awefully close to the lip which would have made screwing on the drip line for the plants a pain. When it was on a wood pallet previously it didn’t move an inch.