Rain barrel project

So, my friends will know I'm frugal (ok, cheap) to a fault. I hate paying a big water bill; and I especially hate knowing that I have to pay a sewer tax on water that goes on my garden, not the sewer, even though the tax probably takes that into account.

I've been looking into making my own rain barrels, since (being cheap) I hate to pay the price for a new one from a catalog, and I don't mind doing a little bit of work.

Wikipedia has several links on how to make your own rain barrels. Next problem: find some barrels. A friend found a place selling them for $15 apiece (ok, I know I could probably have gotten them for $5 if I'd gone to the Baltimore Pepsi plant or something) and picked up three of them for me. I'll keep two and give one to my Mom for her garden, since she's a pretty enthusiastic gardener and is also on a limited budget.

I'm contemplating trying to save water from my washing machine to use on the garden; but one problem with that, from what I've read, is that you can have problems with e coli if you use laundry water on your vegetables. So if I do capture water from the laundry, I should either a) only save water from loads that have no underwear in them; or b) only use that water on the flower beds, and use rainwater on the vegetables.

I'm putting a shopping list together for the fittings. Next step: plumbing the barrels.