Good Ideas IMP-L50-SAN Impressions Palm Rain Barrel, 50-Gallon, Sandstone

I was looking for a rain barrel that was going to be front and center on my patio in front of my pergola (to catch the massive amount of rain that comes off the pergola roof. Therefore, appearance was just as important as quality and functionality. The barrel is good quality and very attractive. I like the intake design and the two faucets. I added some beautiful flowers to finish it off. It did great this summer and fall and hopefully, it holds up for many seasons.

this company certainly makes some of the better looking rain barrels on the market. most of the other ones i've seen are all some type of adobe looking jar that simply doesn't blend with modern environments. or they are literally like a jug or garbage pail with a spout! just... something i don't want to look at in my garden all day! i like that this model looks a bit less obtrusive, simply like a tree. a palm tree no less, which kinda sorta blends in los angeles where i am! anyway i bought this mainly based on style and i was actually quite happy to find something relatively innocuous yet creative. i don't want a rain barrel that actually looks like a barrel. because i don't live on a farm with pigs going eeye eeye oh! also the spout in the middle is very useful for filling up a watering can, so that is a very good feature too. overall, it's not a bad rain barrel. but one teeny tiny improvement, and i think it could have been a great rain barrel! and that is simply, there's no way to tell how much water is in this unless you smoosh your face up close and personal to the inlet grate, and with a flashlight (i.e. your phone which you will probably get wet haha!), shine a line down on in to see how much water is in there. i don't know how difficult this would be to manufacture as an improvement in the next go-around, but one really good feature that would be nice would be what detergent jugs have. they have a clear strip down the side, so you can see how much detergent is left! if the rain barrel had it so you see water level inside, that would be a really useful feature. the other thing for anyone buying a rain barrel to note is, the FLOW is REALLY LOW PRESSURE! so don't expect to be doing anything that requires a heavy spray like i.e., hosing down the driveway. i use this mainly to collect grey water for plants and the lawn which i wet with a hose / sprinkler. i have bought both a 50 gallon barrel and with the spout wide open takes 20 minutes minimum to empty. and i bought a 90 gallon too, and that takes anywhere from at least 45 minutes to empty. the difference, i have noticed, is how much of a drop there is to the hose when i let it run. (i'm on a hillside... if i let the hose drop to the max and it has the greatest drop / angle... the gravity makes the water flow out MUCH faster..) anyway i'm happy saving / reusing water and feeding the plants. this barrel was one of the somewhat less ugly ways to store the water to do that....!

This is the first time we bought a rain water harvester and already like it. We did attach Oatey rain water collector to our spouts and ran the tubing from that directly to the tank. For that I made a hole in the mesh that came along and squeezed in the tube from Oatey into it and it fits snuggly. Overall impression is good for us and it is a very good start for any beginners. Gave 4 stars for mainly the Pros than Cons. Pros: 1. Modern design, accents well in the garden 2. Easy to install and maintain 3. Dual access is advantageous for easy access using either a hose or directly open tap into a bucket 4. Top of the reservoir has a good aesthetic purpose and serves well for anything that is planted on top. 5. No need to be an expert, just plug and play style. 6. No outside packaging for this, so prevents wastage of packing material and reduces carbon footprint. Cons: 1. Both the tap nozzles have some rust already, don’t know if they will last longer 2. Mesh portion for the water inlet should have been made to fit a tubing 3. Should have a bigger access to clean the inside of the reservoir but From other people suggestions I plan to add barley based products to avoid algae accumulation and thus prevent anything growing in there.

Installed mine in front of my house, next to a downspout that dumps water all over the sidewalk leading to the front door. Dropped a 10" hanging basket of petunias into the planting well, leaving it in the pot but first removing the hanger. Have had people comment that it looks like a beautiful planter, not a rain barrel, which is exactly what I was going for, since am in a subdivision with an active HOA that likes to pounce on anything not attractive. Did not use the input port built into the top of the barrel, since my downspout was around the corner from the barrel and I didn't want a big ugly mess of flexible plastic pipe to make the turn and carry the water into the top of the barrel. First I situated the barrel where I wanted it. Second, I drilled a hole in the side of the rain barrel just below the bottom of the sunken top for the input port. Then measured and installed a Fiskars Diverter Pro on my downspout, so the pipe is essentially level coming from the downspout into the barrel. Ensures the overflow goes back down the downspout once the barrel is full, instead of blowing out the barrel. May try to paint the diverter to match the downspout next. It was a thrill to fill my watering can from the real brass spigot to water some new plantings, instead of hauling hose around from the side of the house.

This is the cat's meow people. Looks suspiciously small in the picture but NO NO NO. It makes your mouth water once you lift it out of the box. But just expectorate in the fantastic top planter which is very well configured into the unit. Do not understand why complaints about it being so small is. Must be from Corn growers. The big packing box was a little ratty but NO fear. Unit is so sturdy and large enough to please alright that it could ship without a box from the Galapagos Island shore, I am so cited about this item. The designer should get the engineering award. I thought from the picture it was flimsy and packed with issuers but I was very wrong about that one. The twio brass spigots actually screw into the thread holes in two seconds. This is brilliant=just brilliant.` Why can't the Whitehouse think like the makers of these special and nice units. You will go nuts over this item too I bet. This one is a keeper.

The actual flaw in the design is the size of the hole/screen and where they are in relative position to the downspout. The hole is only a little bigger than the size of the gutter itself so using an angled piece is not advised unless you want to position the barrel about 6-8" away from your house because of the size of the hole you will need 2 angle pieces so that the water will be going down precisely over the hole and that will probably mean cutting your gutter to make this fit. In my case my installer had a joint right about the height of this barrel so I was able to avoid the angular geometry and cutting and just kicked the bottom out so that it lined up with the hole on this barrel. The way this barrel's intake hole is located and screened off with a thick plastic screen means that any debris that lands on the screen will clog the holes instantly and the water will not go into the barrel. Furthermore, and might I add most annoyingly, the size of the hole and screen means that any water that doesnt land on the screen is going to be channeled into the rim where there is a 1 - 1.5" wide and maybe 0.5" deep lip that goes around to the front of the barrel and it cascades down the front and onto the ground. The problem is with the holes of the screen filling up at the slightest amount of dirt or pine needles, the vast majority of the water goes around this channel and onto the ground right by the foundation of the house. I may as well have left the original downspout and angled kick out in... they shot the water out in about the same place and required no effort. In 2 days of hard rain the barrel only filled half way if that's any indication on how poorly it fills. Even when its full to overflowing the bottom spout doesnt drain fast enough to keep the barrel emptied so you have a giant puddle of water all around it right at the base of your house... this can cause foundation issues and I'd really rather not have a 20,000 bill because someone in china couldnt put a bigger hole in a barrel or a bigger spigot in.

Great looking barrel that you don't have to hide! Everyone that sees it thinks it's some sort of water feature/fountain. I tell them, "kinda!" Not much to hate here. Seems to be pretty good quality overall, and I'm happy with it! I drilled a hole in the side and hooked it up to a Fiskars Diverter no problem. My small gripes: The top fills with too much water before it reaches the overflow to run off. I fixed this by drilling a few small holes in the top so the water in the planter on top just falls into the barrel. Not planning to ever use the planter anyway, but if I do, some landscape fabric will hold the dirt in and keep the barrel clean. The screened opening is very small. It'll be hard to scrub this thing out when the time comes. It'd be great if they allowed the entire top to pop off. The hose bibs were hard to get secure. Apparently I have weak woman hands. My husband had to come out and tighten them for me and extra half turn. It'd be great if they just shipped in place but beggars can't be choosers, and I'm sure they'd poke out of the box and get damaged.

Let me preface this review by saying this is my first rain catcher and I have no idea what I doing. There's a strong chance that any gripes I have are due to my ignorance. I purchased this rain barrel along with an Oatey rain diverter for the downspout. I envisioned the diversion of water from the downspout to the barrel and when the barrel got full of water it would back up into the rain diverter and down the downspout and out to the street. Right off the bat I could see this wouldn't be the case as the top opening is not closed but comes with a plastic mesh screen. The rain diverter comes with a floppy tube that I guess is supposed to (magically) hover over the hole and pour water into the mesh opening. Even if I could make that happen it's clear that once barrel becomes full, water will bubble out of the top opening and pour into the top reservoir (the portion where you see the plant sitting in), and then out the drain hole or right over the top if the rain is heavy enough, down the outside of the barrel, and onto the ground! Half the point of this barrel was to keep water OFF THE GROUND!! So I set out to try and solve this issue. I had an idea to close off the open hole. To do this I purchased a small square of plexiglass and cut and ground it into shape using my Dremmel. Once I had the hole covered I had to drill out a smaller hole in the plexiglass and design a way for the diverted water to enter the barrel. I ran back to my local hardware store and picked up some PVC tubing and elbow joints and fashioned what you see in my picture. Success! Or so I thought. The rain barrel fills up surprisingly fast and on the first heavy rain I noticed water pouring all over the ground and still not backing up into the rain diverter and out to the street! There was water spraying out of the top inlet hole covered by the plexiglass because it wasn't a water tight seal. That combined with the fact that rain was being naturally caught in the top reservoir (where the plant goes) and pouring out the drain hole and over the top, I once again had no water at all being diverted back into the downspout and a virtual flood inside the flower bed area. On the next dry day I took the plexiglass cover off and ran a bead of silicone sealant around the barrel's opening hoping it would be water tight; it was not. I couldn't get enough sealant to seal the barrel's uneven surface but then also be perfectly level on top to make a perfect seal with the underside of the plexiglass. I took to Amazon to find some thin rubber pads and have since pulled of the bead of silicone and cut a rubber pad down to size and installed it underneath the plexiglass and added more screws to really secure it down. This solution has (finally) worked to create a tight seal and allow water to back up into my PVC piping and into the rain diverter. Unfortunately there are now issues with the design of the rain diverter and water is now bubbling out of the rain diverter and pouring down the OUTSIDE of the downspout into the flower bed area, AGAIN!!! At this point I'm completely frustrated with the whole setup and the fact that I've spent so much time and money into this silly thing. With regard to the specific things I actually do like about this barrel, there are a few. This barrel is sturdy! The walls are thick and there is no worry of bulging areas or anything of the sort. The barrel comes with actual metal spigot to screw in; not plastic. It even comes with a small roll of silicone tape which is a nice touch. It also looks very pretty and not at all like your typical giant ugly blue barrel. If you didn't know it was a (somewhat) functioning rain catcher, you'd think it to be just a very nice planter on the side of the house! I don't know where I go from here as the next issue I have isn't with the barrel but the downspout rain diverter. Hopefully I'll have a 100% working solution soon because as the title says, I really want to love this!