Short Stuff: Rain Barrels!

Summary

Stuff You Should Know — Short Stuff: Rain Barrels!

Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Air Date: June 10, 2026
Network: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

In this "Short Stuff" episode, Josh and Chuck dive into the practical world of rain barrels: what they are, why people use them, and the environmental and practical ins and outs of collecting rainwater at home. Balancing their signature humor and banter with historical and scientific insight, the hosts peel back the layers—from ideal collection methods and roof material considerations to the do’s and don’ts of using harvested rainwater.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

What Are Rain Barrels?

• Definition & Basics:
  • Rain barrels are simple cisterns or containers set up to catch rainwater from your roof’s runoff, mainly via gutters ([02:16]).
  • These systems have been used for thousands of years, notably in early arid civilizations where rainwater was a precious commodity ([02:30], Josh).

Uses & Benefits of Rainwater

• Non-potable Uses:
  • Collected rainwater is best used for gardening, lawn watering, car washing, etc., but not for drinking due to contaminants ([02:45], Chuck).
• Water Quality:
  • Rainwater becomes cleaner the longer it rains, as early rain "scrubs" additional particles from the air. Later rainfall is typically purer ([03:14], Chuck).
  • Rainwater is "soft"—lacking hard minerals—and is generally better for plants compared to chemically treated tap water, which often contains chlorine or sodium ([03:36], Josh & Chuck).

Environmental Impact

• Ecological Benefits:
  • Collecting rainwater helps local ecology by reducing runoff into storm drains, which can carry oil, antifreeze, tar, and fertilizers into waterways, contributing to problems like algae blooms ([05:02], Josh; [05:29], Chuck).
  • If rainwater harvesting was done on a large scale, it could significantly lessen runoff issues ([06:17], Josh & Chuck).

Determining Collection Potential (Math Segment)

• Calculating Yield:
  • Rain collection depends on roof size. For example:
    • A 1,200 sq. ft. roof can collect about 720 gallons of water from 1" of rain ([08:34], Chuck).
    • Formula: Roof sq. footage × 0.6 = Gallons collected per inch of rain ([08:41], Chuck).

Roof Material & Rainwater Quality

• Best and Worst Roof Types:
  • Asphalt shingle and treated cedar roofs can contaminate rainwater with undesirable chemicals (e.g., arsenic and other treatments) ([09:33], Josh & Chuck).
  • Metal roofs, unless untreated, may leach PFAS (perfluoroalkyl substances) ([10:05], Chuck).
  • Slate, terracotta, and ceramic tiles are best but expensive ([10:23], Chuck).
• Filtration:
  • Regardless of roof type, using proper filters is advised ([10:29], Josh).

Rain Barrel System Essentials

• Filtration & Overflow:
  • A good filtration setup and overflow mechanism are key to a functional system ([11:01], Josh & Chuck).
  • Overflow pipes should divert excess water away from the foundation ([11:12], Chuck).
• Lid & Safety:
  • Lids are vital to prevent debris, sunlight, and mosquitoes from entering, and to keep out children ([11:48], Josh).
  • Stagnant, unprotected rain barrels are mosquito breeding grounds ([12:14], Chuck).

Maintenance & Seasonal Considerations

• Ongoing Care:
  • Regular cleaning and inspection of filters, lid integrity, gutter cleanliness, and leak checks are required ([13:55], Josh).
• Winterizing:
  • In freezing climates, disconnect and fully empty rain barrels to prevent cracking ([14:11], Josh & Chuck).

Notable Clarifications & Warnings

• Not for Drinking:
  • Rainwater from barrels should never be consumed unless specifically treated ([04:45], Chuck; [12:59], Josh).
• Vegetable Gardens:
  • When using for edible gardens, don’t water shortly before harvest to limit contaminant uptake ([13:09], Chuck, with comical exaggeration).

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Notable Quotes & Fun Moments

• On Usefulness of Rainwater:
  • “It’s definitely not pure...it picks up all sorts of particles and pollen and weird stuff. So it’s not drinkable. You don’t want to collect rainwater and then start just drinking it unless you’re in some sort of weird survival situation.” — Chuck ([02:45])
• On Soft Water and Plants:
  • “Rainwater is also usually pretty soft water, which is good for flowers and plants.” — Josh ([03:36])
• On Roof Material Realities:
  • “Slate tiles, terracotta tiles, or ceramic roof tiles are probably the best...So you gotta be rich.” — Josh & Chuck ([10:23]-[10:27])
• Comedic Banter:
  • “If it were a mosquito factory, I'd have to deal with that, too.” — Chuck ([12:36])
• On Winterizing:
  • “You need to winterize it, which is basically unhooking it from everything and, like, emptying it. Sorry, you’re not going to.” — Chuck ([14:16])
• Joking Disclaimer:
  • “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.”
  • “No. Josh is kidding, everybody. Don’t get us canceled and sued. That is not true.” — Chuck & Josh ([13:41]-[13:53])
• Math Revisited:
  • “I feel like I wasn’t 100% clear on the math, and it might help for me to go over it one more time.” — Chuck ([14:25])
  • “I think we totally should. I’ll see you next week.” — Josh ([14:33])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• What are Rain Barrels / Brief History: [01:29]–[02:30]
• Why Not Drink Rainwater?: [02:45]–[03:36]
• Benefits for Plants/Ecology: [03:36]–[06:17]
• Environmental Impact of Runoff: [05:02]–[06:17]
• How Much Water Can You Collect (Math): [07:49]–[09:10]
• Roofs & Water Quality Discussion: [09:33]–[10:51]
• Filtration & Overflow Mechanisms: [10:51]–[12:14]
• Mosquito & Algae Prevention: [11:48]–[12:44]
• General Maintenance & Winterizing: [13:55]–[14:24]

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Tone & Style

The episode blends practical advice and environmental consciousness with classic SYSK humor and offbeat asides, making the topic approachable and entertaining. Listeners come away with a working knowledge of rain barrels—not just their function, but the broader considerations behind their use.

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For anyone interested in sustainable home practices, gardening, or DIY water conservation, this episode is an entertaining, essential primer on rain barrels!

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

[Ryan Seacrest]

It's the rage bait.

[Chuck Bryant]

It feels like it's trying to divide people.

[Josh Clark]

We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave. And this is short stuff. Rain barrels. Let's go.

[Josh Clark]

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

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, maybe we will get to your flush toilets. Just go water your vegetable pads.

[Josh Clark]

That's it. Nailed it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe when we get to the parts where you ran into trouble, you can mention it.

[Josh Clark]

Nah, let's just get to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so we're talking about rain barrels, which are essentially just kind of what you said. They're cisterns or barrels or whatever that you catch rainwater in for use in ways that you might find productive.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, people have been doing this for a long time. Like thousands and thousands of years, people have been collecting rainwater because obviously the cradle of civilization is in very arid climate. So rain was very Precious commodity back then and still.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 its way down, it picks up all sorts of particles and pollen and weird stuff. So it's not drinkable. You don't want to collect rainwater and then just start drinking it unless you're in some sort of weird survival situation somewhere. Yeah, this is not what you want to do at your house with running water that's perfectly fine. Instead, it's really good for things like watering your garden, washing your car, that kind of stuff. The thing is, rainwater becomes even purer the longer the rain goes. Right. So that stuff actually kind of gets scrubbed out of the air, and later, rain can actually be a little cleaner than the rain that comes down first. So rainwater is good, is the point I'm trying to make.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was kind of a fun fact to learn. Did not know that. Rainwater is also usually pretty soft water, which is good for flowers and plants and, you know, tap water. You know, when Emily waters the indoor plant, she lets water sit out for, like, a couple of days, because I think that eventually cleans up the water some. But she never takes tap water and directly waters, like, her houseplants. No, because of, you know, things like chlorine and sanitation chemicals that are in that treated water.

[Chuck Bryant]

We have one of those, like, one drop, I think, filters that's like 20 or 30 bucks for the whole system. And it, like, I've tested the water afterward, and at the very least, it gets pretty much all the chlorine out of tap water. And we use those. They last forever. It's really great.

[Josh Clark]

And by tested, you mean you take a big swig and go, eh, tastes good, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, pretty much.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So one thing also I just want to say real quick about soft water is if you have treated soft water, that's not good for plants because they treat it with sodium. And rainwater is naturally soft, which means it doesn't contain a lot of hard minerals. A lot of them. It contains some.

[Josh Clark]

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

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. Dude, my hair still has zero volume or body from our show in Madison in mid April.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, my liver has extra volume and body because of my Madison experience.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so collecting rainwater is also good for the local ecology, because rainwater not being diverted into that muni system is gonna stay in the lakes and rivers, obviously, which is a Great thing for the local wildlife, for sure. And if you're harvesting rainwater, you're reducing the amount of the rainwater runoff, which can be bad. You know that initial dirty rainwater could be like, not great for lakes and streams.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. Because your sewers probably get directed. The rain stormwater drains get directed right. To brooks, cre, 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. 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. 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.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. I think we should take a break.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And we're gonna come right back and hopefully talk very little about math. If I can talk Josh into it right after.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Josh Clark]

I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

[Ryan Seacrest]

It's the rage bait.

[Chuck Bryant]

It feels like it's trying to divide people.

[Josh Clark]

We got clear facts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe we could calm down a little bit.

[Josh Clark]

NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

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

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Well, let's find out how it goes. So essentially, you need to figure out how much water you're going to get, right?

[Josh Clark]

Well, not really. I mean, you could just collect rainwater and use it, but sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, let's say you're a math buff, but you're terrible at math and you're trying to figure out how much rainwater you're going to be able to collect. It's actually very simple. All you have to do is figure out the square footage of your roof because your roof acts as the water catchment, and the water that hits your roof is going to flow eventually into your rain barrel. Right. So let's say that you have a 1200 square foot roof.

[Josh Clark]

Don't do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. You will get 720 gallons of water from one inch of rainfall.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just from having that roof. Right. And I arrived at that figure by taking the width of the roof, multiplying it by the length of the roof, and you get the square footage of the roof and then multiplying that number, the square footage by 0.6, which is the portion of the gallon that will be harvested from one inch of rainwater falling on one square foot of your roof. And like I said, if you have 1200 square feet of roof, that's going to yield 720 gallons.

[Josh Clark]

Man, you were right there. Sometimes I think you want people to

[Chuck Bryant]

click the stop button or maybe just skip forward a little bit. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I know. 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's going to be. If you've got like a brand new, asbestos, tarred asphalt shingled roof, you're probably not gonna like, love that rainwater. It's not great. Treated cedar shakes are lovely, but they are treated with stuff that you're not gonna want, like arsenic to keep them from rotting, obviously. Galvanized metal. Some people say, like, that's probably the best thing, right? What do you say?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

So you got to be rich.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, pretty much. It sounds like, unfortunately.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, those are all like super expensive roofs, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So, I mean, some people can spend a ton of money on, like, a really nice filtration system and, like, a pump system if you want to, like, turn this into, like, you know, hosable water or sprayable water.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because otherwise, you know, you got to figure that out, too, because you got a lot of water, and, man, you know, that rain comes down quickly and those things overflow very fast and fill up very quickly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So there's actually overflow mechanism. I'm sure there's really elaborate ones, but at the very least, you want one that goes from pretty much the top of the rain barrel into a downspout so that when that rain barrel fills up, it's going to overflow into a downspout where it's supposed to go rather than through the top of the rain barrel and right down into your foundation. You don't want that. So that's something that you definitely want to have in any rain barrel setup, or else you're going to be crying all the way to ram jack, you know?

[Josh Clark]

So what the hell is ramjack?

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a foundation repair company.

[Josh Clark]

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. That could be very sad, obviously. And you want to keep sunlight out because I think you talked about the algae growth in Act 1. And also mosquitoes. You don't want mosquitoes laying their larvae in there.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

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 gonna have to get rid of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

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

[Chuck Bryant]

What about the bacteria, though?

[Josh Clark]

Very nice. Touche. Touche, as they say.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks.

[Josh Clark]

That's French for touch 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 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, 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.

[Josh Clark]

No. Josh is kidding, everybody. Don't get us canceled and sued. That is not true. That is not true.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks.

[Josh Clark]

What else?

[Ryan Seacrest]

Here.

[Josh Clark]

I can't believe we've been talking about this for almost 14 minutes. You gotta clean that filter regularly. You have to inspect that thing. Gotta keep that lid tight. Watch out for leaks. Keep those gutters clean. I just got mine cleaned.

[Chuck Bryant]

What if you live in a freezing type area?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, that can crack that rain barrel. You gotta check it out on the reg.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Plus also, you need to winterize it, which is basically unhooking it from everything and, like, emptying it. Sorry, you're not going to.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Putting it in your bedroom.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. I feel like I wasn't 100% clear on the math, and it might help for me to go over it one more time.

[Josh Clark]

I think we totally should. I'll see you next week.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Well, short stuff is out.

[Josh Clark]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

[Ryan Seacrest]

For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit

[Josh Clark]

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.