Garden Shed #27 - Rain Chains and a Workbench

Hard to believe that I can have 27 posts on building a garden shed... That being said, I am going into a lot of detail to provide useful information to others. My kids think I am obsessed - and that's probably true, until I am on to the next project.

I put the rain-chains in the gutters. The first time I saw a rain-chain was about 10 years ago in Tokyo. It was a string of little cups that made sound - the shed has just a simple chain to avoid down spouts.

I cut a 2" hole in the gutter with a hole saw before mounting. I also put a gutter support directly above the hole to support the chain.


I opened up the top link of the chain and hung it from the gutter screw. I didn't want to hang it directly from the vinyl gutter, assuming it would eventually fail. I put a 2" ABS floor drain (cut to allow the chain to pass) to direct the water on to the chain.


Here is how it looks coming out of the gutter.


You obviously need a reasonable overhang (the shed has 18") to use these effectively.


What to do with the run-off? Water plants...

We are going to put terraced planting beds down the hill from the shed as shown below. The black lines are the retaining walls, and the red areas will be gravel walking paths. I will install a simple drain-field system - 4" perforated pipe behind each of the walls and gravel "spill ways" to spread the water out to all the beds.

I have a few other photos of things we have done since the last post:

My DW painted the panel areas of the sliding door the green base color of the shed. When the door was all brown, it was too much and became the focal point.


I installed the workbench for my DW. Its a pretty simple design made of 2x4's and plywood.


The lower shelf only extends 2/3 of the way across, leaving a taller, open area on the left. We will put a couple of rubber garbage cans here to store potting soils. Tomorrow, I hope to get the racks and pegs up to start putting all the garden tools away.