Oatey 14209 Mystic Rainwater Collection System,White,2" x 3"

As others have already stated, during heavy rain you will likely experience some overflow between the two halves (easily remedied with a bead of silicon sealant or a large rubber band) and the white diverting hose isn’t pliable enough so I swapped it for some corrugated pool hose (see images) It’s easy enough to fit, I used an angle grinder (with 1mm thin cutting disc) to cut the aluminium downpipe as it’s pretty flimsy stuff (use a fine toothed hacksaw if you don’t possess a grinder) and decided to cut mine at an angle to make a neater job. Works well with sealed collector systems and diverts water back into the downpipe when full but comes supplied with a bung to use if your system isn’t sealed. All in all, quite pleased with my purchase save for a couple of minor flaws.

I bought this with muted expectations based on the somewhat mixed reviews. However, after installing it and observing it during the first rain storm, I honestly can't figure out why so many people have trouble with this incredibly simple and very effective rain collector. 1. This fit the gutters which were on my house like a glove. It's not going to work for you if your gutters are the wrong size so measure first if your gutters look like they are a non-standard size. 2. When run into my sealed rain barrel, this thing collected almost all of the water during the first rain storm. I would say upwards of 90%. When it started raining hard, I went out several times to monitor the barrels, and there was only a trickle coming from the gutter, but I could hear the torrent of water flowing into the barrel. It easily filled one 55g barrel after about 3 hours of on-an-off moderate rain. Good think I have three more to integrate! 3. Cutting the gutters is a bit of a pain without a nicer hack saw. I only had a cheap one, but I found it much easier to start with the saw, and then finish with tin snips. Installation took about 20 minutes, and went smoothly. 4. The included hose was kinked when it arrived, but feeding it over a piece of PVC pipe and hitting it with a blowdryer relaxed it considerably. 5. The hose actually fits very nicely over a 1" PVC sleeve. Lowes has a PVC connector which is 3/4" threaded on one side, with a 1" slip coupling on the other side. This $0.47 fitting threaded perfectly into the threaded bung on the barrel cap, and the hose fits snugly enough over the slip coupling to make a water tight seal. 6. In general, the product is well build, well designed, and looks attractive when installed. It even has the same texture/pattern that my gutters have.

Follow the instructions for installation. Easy. It works exactly as it should. Voila! The new rain barrel was full after one good rain!! Free good water for the garden

Quality product.

Living in the desert southwest, water is always a precious commodity and I've been wanting to collect rainwater for use in my backyard for some time and finally got around to installing gutters and using a pair of 50-gallon rain barrels to go with them. I ordered the Oatey diverters ahead of time and had them installed at the same time as the downspouts for the new gutters and the installer had no problem adding them in. They work very well but do not divert 100% of the rainwater depending on the flow level. A small trickle does still come out of the downspout but not anything like what it would be if the red plug was fitted and the hose removed. I'm ok with that arrangement as when it rains, it tends to be heavy but short duration, so capturing +90% or so is a drastic improvement over what I was getting before which was just whatever runoff happened to make its way to the grass. The installer was a professional so there were no leaks and the feed angle of the diverter matched up perfectly with my barrels to allow the large flexible hose to be directed into them for collection. The hoses do have some kinking from being packed inside the box but once stretched out, that didn't really pose a problem for their flow volume in my experience.

Works as expected.