Oatey Mystic Rainwater Collection System, 2 in. x 3 in., White

Review of Collection System plus installation tips on homemade rain barrel connection
I have so far made three rain barrel setups with two of them using the Oatey Mystic Rainwater Collection System. The Oatey Mistic collector is a well engineered and efficient method to divert rainwater from you downspout to you rain barrel. This collection system is designed so that when the barrel is full the water then backs up the fill tube causing the water to then go down the leader and away from your house.This unit itself is made of quality plastic with easy step by step instructions. You should be conferrable on the use of basic hand tools to do the cutting. I used a 4″hand grinder with a cut off wheel to cut the downspout and I had removed the downspout to cut it instead of cutting in place. You do need a file to remove excess material caused by the cut. This diverted the water with no problems whether it was a light rain or a heavy rain. This is why I gave this 5 stars.The biggest problem of this system is connecting the 1-1/4 ID hose to your rain barrel. I am a master gardener and I am doing a fund raiser making rain barrels. We were able to get donated food grade plastic barrels from Coke to use for these rain barrels. These barrels have two bung opening that have a 2-1/2 buttress thread. There is no direct connection from these bung openings to the 1-1/4 hose. You can purchase a bung adapter to a 2″ npt thread, 2″ npt to 1-1/4 bushing and a 1-1/4 hose barbb. This is expensive about $25.00 total.This is my best solution to solve this problem . Get a Apollo 1-1/4 in Dia adapter plastic coil fitting (lowes item #22741) You should be able to get this same adapter at any plumbing store just make sure it is made out of metal. Put a 1-1/2 in the top of the barrel with a wood bit or a hole saw. You then have to force the platic coil fitting into the hole. Push down on the fitting while turning with a very large pipe wrench. This take quite a bit of effort to get started but it will work. You can purchase a 1-1/4 npt tap off of ebay you maybe able to find one at a realizable price.The other thing you have to do is put a vent tube on your rain barrel. With my barrel the bungs had 3/4 npt thread all ready molded into the bung. Use a 15/16 wood bit and drill out the bottom of the 3/4 npt thread. Install a threaded hose barbb, I used a 3/4 npt to 3/8 id tubing barbb. I rain the 3/8 Id vinyl hose up the diverted hose using wire ties to attach it . Make sure the vent hose opening is above the Oatey rain diverter.In all this is a very good unit and I hope this help any one setting up a rain barrel.

works, however needs modification/improvement
To fight the drought in CA, I installed this on one of our down spout.Installation Tip:=================The hose came with kit is too short and stiff for anything. I bought a Flotec FP0012-6U-P2 Universal Discharge Hose Kit, 24-Feet by 1-1/4-Inch or 1-1/2-Inch to replace the one in kit. It fits just right, bought an additional hose clamp(1 came with hose kit), 1 clamp to diverter, the other over the inlet of rain barrel. Very easy to install and cheap. The hose is pretty long, but it can be cut at 3 places. (I guess you can cut anywhere, but I chose to cut at the flat section, so it’s easy to clamp).Problem 1.=================The bottom part of the divert that supposed to slid into the down spout is a little too big, it is impossible to slide in, I even tried to hammered it in.Fix:I ended up use a hand saw to scrap some plastic off 2 of the corners, so it’s a little bit thinner and smaller. A utility blade prob will do the work too, but I didn’t want to accidentally cut off too much.Problem 2:=================It did not collect very much water during a full day of raining. the problem is the interior design of the diverter. Most of rain water would go through center of diverter and out into the down spout, only around the perimeter of divert would divert water out into the small outlet and to rain barrel. So, unless the rain is so heavy that it fills the entire interior section, most water would simply go right through the middle section.Fix:I cut diagonally through a water bottle, place the bottom section of the bottle over the middle section of the diverter interior, so it forms a cap and covers the middle section to divert all rain water into outlet. Today, after only a few hours of raining, I have 1 foot of water in the 275 gallon tote.

Quality product.

Stupid me purchased this for my Swimming Pool I live in Australia all our measurements are metric so 3inches by 2 inches don’t fit, well made good quality