Skip to main content
Stuff You Should Know

Short Stuff: Rain Barrels!

12 min episode · 2 min read

Episode

12 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

History

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Roof catchment calculation: A 1,200 square foot roof yields 720 gallons of water per inch of rainfall. Calculate your own yield by multiplying roof square footage by 0.6 — this figure represents harvestable gallons per inch of rain per square foot.
  • Roof material quality ranking: Slate, terracotta, and ceramic tiles contribute the fewest contaminants to collected rainwater. Asphalt shingles leach chemicals, treated cedar shakes contain arsenic, and most metal roofs carry PFAS coatings — making premium tile roofs the only genuinely clean collection surface.
  • Essential barrel features: Any rain barrel setup requires three non-negotiable components — a sealed lid to block debris, mosquitoes, and sunlight-driven algae growth; a mesh or UV filter for bacteria; and an overflow outlet redirected to a downspout to prevent foundation water damage.
  • Safe use boundaries for collected water: Rainwater suits car washing, garden irrigation, and flower watering due to its natural softness and low chlorine content. Avoid drinking it untreated, and wait at least one week after watering edible plants before harvesting to reduce contaminant absorption risk.

What It Covers

Josh and Chuck cover rain barrel basics on Stuff You Should Know, explaining rainwater collection history, roof catchment math, water quality by roof material, and practical setup requirements including filtration, overflow systems, and seasonal maintenance.

Key Questions Answered

  • Roof catchment calculation: A 1,200 square foot roof yields 720 gallons of water per inch of rainfall. Calculate your own yield by multiplying roof square footage by 0.6 — this figure represents harvestable gallons per inch of rain per square foot.
  • Roof material quality ranking: Slate, terracotta, and ceramic tiles contribute the fewest contaminants to collected rainwater. Asphalt shingles leach chemicals, treated cedar shakes contain arsenic, and most metal roofs carry PFAS coatings — making premium tile roofs the only genuinely clean collection surface.
  • Essential barrel features: Any rain barrel setup requires three non-negotiable components — a sealed lid to block debris, mosquitoes, and sunlight-driven algae growth; a mesh or UV filter for bacteria; and an overflow outlet redirected to a downspout to prevent foundation water damage.
  • Safe use boundaries for collected water: Rainwater suits car washing, garden irrigation, and flower watering due to its natural softness and low chlorine content. Avoid drinking it untreated, and wait at least one week after watering edible plants before harvesting to reduce contaminant absorption risk.

Notable Moment

Later rainfall in any given storm is measurably cleaner than the first drops — the initial rain scrubs airborne particles, meaning water collected mid-storm carries fewer pollutants than what falls at the start.

Know someone who'd find this useful?

Episode Transcript

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building. You're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog, HVAC on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger. For quality products, easy reordering, and 247 support, call 1800, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep. Even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com/bankguy. Capital One, n a, member, f d I c. Hey, everybody. It's Josh and Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave, and this is short stuff, rain barrels. Let's go. That's right. I feel like it's 2,010. This is a bit of a throwback, but I know very little about rain barrels. And I wanted to learn more, and I wanted everybody else to learn more whether they liked it or not. That's right. And my quick history of rain barrels is for a while, we were collecting rainwater, with the small barrels that you attached to your gutter at the edge of the house. Mhmm. That ended up kind of a disaster. And then at one point, we moved to a huge cistern system Mhmm. That collected rainwater from all of our gutters leading into this one cistern. And that ended up being a nightmare. So you've abandoned the rain barrel thing, Yeah. We're not doing rain barrels right now. But, you know, we have, some other sustainable systems in place that are too boring to talk about. Well, maybe we will get to to your flush toilets. Just go water your vegetable bag. That's it. Nailed it. Maybe when we get to the parts where you ran into trouble, you can mention it. Nah. Let's just get to it. Alright. So we're talking about rain barrels, which are essentially just kinda what you said. They're cisterns or barrels or whatever that you catch rainwater in for use, in ways that you might find productive. Yeah. People have been doing this for a long time. Like, thousands and thousands of years, people have been collecting rainwater. Sure. Because obviously the cradle of civilization is in very arid climate, so rain was very precious commodity Mhmm. Back then and still. Yes. Yeah. There's a lot of good reasons to use rainwater. For one, there it's it's definitely not pure. Right? It might start out pretty pure, but on …

Get the full transcript (2,858 words) + summary by email — free

One-time email with the complete transcript and AI summary of this episode. No account needed.

One email, no spam. We’ll also show you what SignalCast does.

Browse all Stuff You Should Know transcripts →

You just read a 3-minute summary of a 9-minute episode.

Get Stuff You Should Know summarized like this every Monday — plus up to 2 more podcasts, free.

Pick Your Podcasts — Free

Keep Reading

More from Stuff You Should Know

We summarize every new episode. Want them in your inbox?

Similar Episodes

Related episodes from other podcasts

Explore Related Topics

This podcast is featured in Best Science Podcasts (2026) — ranked and reviewed with AI summaries.

You're clearly into Stuff You Should Know.

Every Monday, we deliver AI summaries of the latest episodes from Stuff You Should Know and 192+ other podcasts. Free for one show.

Start My Monday Digest

No credit card · Unsubscribe anytime