Overall I am satisfied with the rain barrels, but they could be improved in my opinion. The gaskets, threads on the spigots, size of the spigots, and better instructions.
I had to improvise to connect the two barrels together. Instructions for how to do that were not provided with the purchase. Nor could I find sound information in the reviews or answered questions for this product.
I bought a tube at the hardware store with two pipe clamps to connect the two rain barrels together. I connected them together at the middle outlet rather than at the top of the barrels for several reasons. The main one being, I wanted to have an overflow for the second barrel. It would not make sense to have the overflow at the middle of the barrel for obvious reasons.
As to all of the people that say that the barrels leak or got destroyed I would argue that it is user error. If you look at the threads on the spigots they are fine threaded. I had to purchase a fine thread to hose thread adaptor to connect my hose to the spigot. Connecting the hose straight to the fine thread spigot would be why it leaks. I figured that was common sense.
Also building my base to be level for the barrels out of cinder blocks and concrete caps was key. The base MUST be level or the barrels will not hold water.
I have two full rain barrels now after 2 rain falls. I bought a cheap irrigation system and a cheap external pump to push the water to my garden.
As you can see from my photos because of the hydrostatic pressure I could not get my 2nd barrel to fully fill with water. So after one rainfall I simply diverted the slinky tube downspout to the second barrel so it would fully fill up.
It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.
And it was a cheaper alternative to the giant plastic 50 gallon rain barrels that I would have to figure out how to store for winter.