Hello,

At the moment, I have two 55 gallon "food grade" containers that I want to use to capture rain off of our metal barn roof. I would like to primarily use this for watering some plants near the barn but also to water the horses and donkeys we have. If it works well, I plan to expand the system to store more water.

I've seen some ads for inline diverters, including a nifty one that would automatically stop diverting (probably via a float or something like that) once the barrel was full.

I wanted to add a spigot to the side of one of the barrels to allow me to fill up my watering can when I needed to water the plants but also want to run pipes to a spigot that would be more convenient for the animals.

Has anyone ever done anything like this? I'd be interesting in how to heat the barrels in the winter and keep the pipes from freezing - this is, of course, for the animals. Not much grows around here in winter. :)

Also, would you know if mosquitos were a problem or easily managed by using screening?

Thanks for you help!

Matt