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.

Just received our first rain and I’m soo excited for this season. Word of advice if your down spout has room on the bottom or if it’s two pieces connected make one cut at a time. 6 inches is the width that’s best but you can get away with 8 inches if you make a mistake. The water flow is great, the attachments that go to the downspout feels durable however the tubing required heat to straighten out would be nice to know the diameter of the tube so I can install a hard pvc tube, super easy to install the diverter I used a Dremel for the sections furthest from our home and placed a cardboard between the house and downspouts and used a hand saw for the back side.

As a mechanical engineer, I loved the design of this when I first saw it. The diverter does not just take all of the water from your downspout, but provides overflow security for times when the rain is too heavy, when leaves and sediment fall, and for when your barrel is full. In these occasions, the water simply continues down the remaining downspout as if the diverter weren't there. The unit is also two pieces, which makes it easy to clean, maintain and service, if necessary. Installation is very simple, you cut a section out of the downspout and replace it with the diverter. This does mean that both sides of the downspout need to be supported, so if you don't have brackets on the bottom half of the downspout, you will need them. The only thing that I did not like about the unit is in the installation. The top piece of the diverter runs on the outside of the downspout, but the bottom of the diverter plugs into the lower half of the downspout. This leaves the cut edge of the downspout exposed. This is unsightly and potentially dangerous with sharp metal edges. I would love to see a redesign with a small lip to cover the cut edge. At that point, the unit would be perfect. As to effectiveness, we've had our barrel out in the rain for a few months through hurricanes Irene and Lee, and only managed to amass a few inches deep of water. After installing the diverter, the next morning we had a very heavy rain, but only for about 15-20 minutes. Out of curiosity, we checked the rain barrel to see if we captured any, and the entire barrel was full.

This a very well made product, but I altered mine to be more effective. I found the inner part that projects almost into the upper interior part was too long, and thus allowed very little clearance around the outside, making a prime place for debris to collect, which happened quickly on mine. Also, the idea that most of the water stays around the outside of the downspout is probably true, but much depends on where it is installed. For example, mine is very close to a 45 degree elbow, which probably affects the flow somewhat. But why not allow all the water to go through the outer part where the drain hose is attached? Why must the center be open at all? Why not allow all the flow to go first to the area where the drain hose is attached, since any excess, which would happen if your barrel is full, or if the flow is too great for the hose, goes right back to the lower downspout anyway? So, I solved those problems by cutting off some of the inner part, thus lowering it to eliminate debris-clogging, then adding more "overflow" openings in that inner part. But most effective of all, I simply added a cover to that inner part, which directed all of the flow to the area where the drain hose is attached. Why isn't that done in the design? After all, any excess is diverted to the lower downspout anyway. Why not collect all of the water flow, instead of depending on the idea that "most" of the water stays around the outside. This greatly increased the amount of water going into my rain barrel. This still is a well made water collector, but needs some improvement, I believe, since many purchasers do not have the ability to alter it as I did.

Alright. So I ordered this to help keep more water from around my foundation as well as having free water for my plants using a rain barrel. Lets get down to install. Tools required: -Metal hacksaw. -Hammer. (Better to use a rubber mallet) -Lubrication. I had a can of wd40 and used that for external. Internal lubrication i used petroleum jelly(not pictured). -2 flat head screw driver. -3 screws. Flat tip and aluminum preferred. -Screw driver. -Drill and drill tip for screw holes. -tape measurer -sealant for screws if desired. To ensure no water leaks and the screws hold. Install time: -1hr, only because I recently moved and my workroom is in boxes. Could probably be done in less if you have all the stuff handy. 1. So I'm replacing the gutter strap so i pulled that off the top. I cut the gutter 20 inches from the top of the barrel. I removed a 6 inch section. 2. Put on the top part. Lubricate the gutter and slide it on. Use a hammer to reach desired height up the gutter. 3. Lubricate the main section inside. Using a flathead screw driver bend the end of the gutter so you can insert the section inside. Tehehehe 4. Use a hammer to ensure its all the way up. Be careful as to not break the plastic. I couldn't find my rubber mallet so use one if you have one. 5. Bring up the lower cut section and use flt head screw driver again to bend it around the lower part to slide on. I used a tad more lubrication to make it easy. Drill 3 holes the same size as your screws on the front and sides. 6. I had extra aluminum screws from another project so I used those do they don't rust. Ensure the flat tip so if you so go through it debris will not catch. Screw them in after putting the sealant in the hole or around the screw. 7. Attach hose and feed it to the barrel. I plan on putting a clamp on when I find the box of them I have. I may drill a hole in the barrel side later and attach the hose that way to a spout ill screw and seal in. All in all it should be a .5 to 1 hr project. I didn't have my stuff unboxed so I went a little over an hour finding stuff as I went. Use: Works okay so far. I haven't found a need to use more screws yet to ensure the 2 plastic pieces stay attached but I might. I might also add some screws to the top to ensure it stays on. It rained and filled some of the barrel with no issues. The hose couldve been clear so I may swap that out someday so the white doesnt stick out. Pros: -Works as expected. -Feels thick and not flimsy. The hose is not a bad hose and pretty thick as well. Cons: -Add aluminium screws to ensure product doesnt slide off. With possible drilling instructions. -Maybe a water soluable lubricant package. -Add a hose color preference. If I didn't have the extra screws I would have had to go find some. I think they should be at least noted on the instructions as well as possibly needing lubricant. So far its a total 5. I will not deduct overall score for extra missing pieces that may not be needed for everyone. Install score was only thing I gave a 4/5.

This was relatively easy to set up as long as you are pretty handy / know your way around gutters and rain barrels, plus have the appropriate tools. It works the way it's supposed to. When there are heavy downfalls, the water goes into the rain barrel and out the gutter. The tubbing is a little hard to flex at first but the as it sits in the sun that improves. My rain barrel filled at a good speed. I have white gutters and a dark blue house, This blends in nicely with the gutter. You can tell it's there but it's not obscenely bulky. This will be the first winter so we will see if it holds up.

I harvest the rainwater from my roof gutters and this diverted does all the work. Easy to install and maintain.

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

Nice, well design, strong, easy to install. Work very well

It seems that downspouts come in a huge variety of sizes. And very rarely are they 2 x 3" it seems. If you look on any of the home building sites, and look at the downspout sizes, you will notice that 2 x 3 is not so standard. I bought 2 of these units to install. One on the garage and one on the house. Neither of these down spouts were the same size. And neither suited the Oatey unit. I modified one downspout to fit, and it works very well indeed. In one light rain, it 1/2 filled our 1000 liter water tote. So if you are lucky to have a 2 x 3 downspout this diverter works wonderfully well.