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

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.

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.

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.

The hose that comes with this kit is the worst for kinking. I'm constantly trying to get these areas of the hose from flat (won't let much water through) to round. Otherwise, the system operates without intervention once installed.

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.

Works as expected.

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

Very good design compared to some over-complicated others. Uses the fact that water tends to run along the edges and debris in the middle to route water to your rain barrel to avoid using filters. Also both pieces properly nest in the downspout, again as opposed to another design. A little tight fit, nothing worrisome. I would also have liked the tubing from the collector to the barrel to be more flexible; it is very thick and kinks somewhat easily, so you may struggle a little. I would suggest placing the barrel in its final position and experimenting with placement of the tubing before cutting.