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Stuff You Should Know

Short Stuff: Rain Barrels!

10 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 35.185 Unknown

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58.242 - 63.99 Hoda Kotb

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69.64 - 75.834 Josh

Hey, everybody. It's Josh and Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave, and this is Short Stuff Rain Barrels. Let's go.

0

76.535 - 78.58 Chuck

That's right. I feel like it's 2010.

78.62 - 89.303 Josh

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.

89.62 - 112.202 Chuck

That's right. And my quick history of rain barrels is for a while we were collecting rainwater with the small barrels that you attach to your gutter at the edge of the house. That ended up kind of a disaster. And then at one point we moved to a huge cistern system that collected rainwater from all of our gutters leading into this one cistern. And that ended up being a nightmare.

113.083 - 115.425 Josh

So you've abandoned the rain barrel thing, huh?

115.962 - 122.617 Chuck

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.

Chapter 2: What are rain barrels and how do they work?

279.047 - 285.778 Josh

Rainwater is naturally soft, which means it doesn't contain a lot of hard minerals. A lot of them. It contains some.

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285.978 - 289.43 Chuck

Where did they have soft water on tour? Was that Madison, Wisconsin? Yes, dude.

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289.771 - 296.595 Josh

My hair is still has zero volume or body from our show in Madison in mid-April.

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296.795 - 322.38 Chuck

Yeah. My liver has extra volume in body because of my Madison experience. That's pretty great. All right. So collecting rainwater is also good for the local ecology because rainwater not being diverted into that muni system is going to stay in the lakes and rivers, obviously, which is a great thing for the local wildlife. And if you're harvesting rainwater, you're reducing the amount of the

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322.36 - 329.318 Chuck

Rainwater runoff, which can be bad, you know, that initial dirty rainwater can be like not great for lakes and streams.

329.378 - 348.316 Josh

No, because your your sewers probably get directed. The rainstorm water drains get directed right to brooks, creeks, lakes, even sometimes, if you can believe it. And that stuff picks up all the oil, all the antifreeze, all the tar, all that stuff, and just takes it to those streams and brooks and lakes with it.

348.616 - 364.758 Josh

And also excess fertilizer, we've talked about plenty of times, that gets taken to waterways and can support algae blooms that kill off everything from other plant life to fish. So any rainwater that you're removing from the runoff, is good.

Chapter 3: What is the history of rainwater collection?

364.819 - 377.763 Josh

The thing is, it's almost not even worth mentioning because you're removing such an insignificant amount that if everybody were doing this, it would have a huge impact. But you're not really going to. You can still feel good about it, though.

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377.783 - 387.18 Chuck

That's right. I think we should take a break. OK. And we're going to come right back and hopefully talk very little about math if I can talk Josh into it right after this.

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420.381 - 433.823 Unknown

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504.477 - 508.302 Josh

Okay, Chuck, it's time for some math.

508.322 - 512.528 Chuck

I mean, please just say and not work your way through this equation, right?

Chapter 4: What are the benefits of using rainwater?

594.272 - 600.342 Chuck

Yeah. Hey, that's an option, by the way, everybody, if you're still with us. You don't have to stop listening. Just 15 seconds at a time, I think it is.

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600.883 - 607.775 Josh

So I never make dry jokes to fool you, but I did just do math to make you squirm for sure.

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608.236 - 624.819 Chuck

Oh, I know. Okay. All right, so we need to talk roofs, though, because it depends on what kind of roof you have as to how great that water is going to be. If you've got a brand new asbestos-tarred asphalt shingled roof, you're probably not going to love that rainwater. It's not great.

0

625.6 - 639.158 Chuck

Treated cedar shakes are lovely, but they are treated with stuff that you're not going to want, like arsenic, to keep them from rotting, obviously. Galvanized metal, some people say, that's probably the best thing, right? What do you say?

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639.138 - 657.45 Josh

Probably not, because most metal roofs are treated with a protective coating that's made of PFAS. So that's going to get right into your water, too. It turns out that slate tiles, terracotta tiles or ceramic roof tiles are probably the best. They're going to contribute the least amount of extra stuff.

658.271 - 658.912 Chuck

So you got to be rich.

659.954 - 662.178 Josh

Yeah, pretty much. It sounds like, unfortunately.

662.639 - 664.622 Chuck

Yeah, those are like super expensive roofs, right?

664.754 - 685.48 Josh

Yes. All three of them are for sure. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is true. If you think about it, you don't want to use asphalt shingles to catch rain with unless, Chuck, you have a good filter. And they definitely make those kind of things because there are some things you want to keep in mind when you're choosing a rain barrel. But one of them is you need a filter of some sort.

Chapter 5: Why is rainwater not safe for drinking?

741.067 - 743.21 Josh

It's a foundation repair company.

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743.23 - 759.573 Chuck

Okay. The other thing you're going to want is a good lid for that thing. It's not just like an open system. If you've never seen a rain barrel, they have lids because it keeps all the debris out and the bugs out. You don't want like a small child crawling into a rain barrel because that could be very sad. Yeah, obviously.

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759.593 - 769.164 Chuck

And you want to keep sunlight out because I think you talked about the algae growth in Act one and also mosquitoes. You don't want mosquitoes laying their larvae in there.

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769.485 - 773.77 Josh

No, you should go to jail if you're breeding mosquitoes, you know.

0

Chapter 6: How can rainwater be used effectively for gardening?

774.256 - 791.361 Chuck

Yeah, we have, I love it because one of our fence walls is completely over the years now, ivy, like beautiful Wrigley Field ivy. And it looks so cool, but it is a mosquito nightmare and we're going to have to get rid of it.

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791.481 - 798.711 Josh

Well, I'm sorry that your ivy is going to have to go away, but I don't blame you one bit. If it were a mosquito factory, I'd have to deal with that too.

0

799.113 - 806.305 Chuck

Yeah, it's really bad. So what else? Oh, yeah, I did talk about filters. They make UV lights that can kill bacteria.

0

806.566 - 807.968 Josh

What about the bacteria, though?

0

811.895 - 813.698 Chuck

Very nice. TouchƩ. TouchƩ, as they say.

813.758 - 815.721 Josh

Thanks. That's French for touch.

816.325 - 824.015 Chuck

What else? You don't want to drink this water. I hope we've made that clear. But, you know, if you can find a way to pump it, you could wash your car with it.

824.475 - 842.738 Josh

You could. You can also use it to grow plants, obviously, flowers, that kind of thing. If you use it in a vegetable garden or a fruit garden, you do not want to use it within probably a week or so. I might even give myself a wider berth than that of harvesting.

842.718 - 861.982 Josh

because those things are going to suck it like any pollutant in that's in that rainwater, and you're going to put it right into your body. You certainly don't want to rinse the vegetables off with that. You want to rinse it off with, you want to basically put your vegetables in a bucket of just pure bleach for several days before you get them out and eat them.

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