Installing an Outdoor Sink

Hi, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Today we're going to talk about a great tool for the homeowner that has an outdoor life, and that is an outdoor sink that is great for the warm months. It's starting to warm up here, we're doing a lot of activities outside, including everything from harvesting onions, garlic's about ready to be harvested, there's other produce that will be clipped and washed. We do that all outside using an outdoor sink, so we don't even have to put it inside. As you can see, this is an inexpensive, lightweight fiberglass tub. You can buy them at any big box store in the east, probably some place at Menards, across the country, could be any place like Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. But this is an outdoor, excuse me, a tub that we've repurposed for an outdoor tub. This is simply a utility sink. It's an integrated sink that is all one piece for the sink up above. We just put an inexpensive faucet on it. This faucet's about $20 for this faucet. This whole unit here is about $70. And by the time you put together the plumbing underneath, which we'll show you in just a moment, you've got a great, handy outdoor tool for about $100, okay? Now, another thing about this faucet I wanted to point out that's great about it, it has some threading on the outside, so I can put an additional hose on this if I want to direct it. This is great for washing small pets outside as well. We have a couple of small pets, and this works very well. And the other thing is, watch what happens on the faucet swivel here. If you've got something that's bigger than the sink, you can go around the back as well. If you've got a tub you're going to fill up or something like that, a 5-gallon bucket, you can move it around the back and turn it on and end up with a great way to do it. Well, let's walk through this really quickly, piece by piece. First of all, this is all a one-piece tub. You can see that the legs down below, there's four legs that come with this, just to make sure it doesn't fall off every time Dirt Maggie, Dirt Maggie? Yeah, Dirt Farmer Maggie and I, sorry, Dirt Farmer Maggie and I move this thing around. We put little self-tapping screws in here, as you can see, here and there. And that keeps those legs, if I move the sink, they go along for the ride. All right, so we build this. The second thing we do is we go ahead and mount this faucet right here onto the deck, the back deck of this. Again, this is all one piece. It's very easy. These faucets are made so that the place where the water comes through is also threaded underneath right here. So you can see that a nut comes up underneath and it holds the faucet on there. The next thing that goes on is one of these Y adapters. You're going to find this over where the washing machine hoses and all that are. And it simply gives you a single source of water coming in, splits to the two sides. Now, that means that either faucet's going to have the same temperature. In this case, it's just well water, and boy, that water coming out in early spring is pretty cool here in the Mountain West. But at any rate, I don't need heated water out here. I guess you could do that if you wanted to with a solar heater or a coil or something. I might do some of that later and show you that in another video. But for today, single source coming in. Notice this is just hose that is attached. As you pan across here, you'll see going over here, you can do a short hose up against a faucet, etc. And some people might argue back and forth, well, is that dangerous? Is it a water hose? Is it safe to drink? Frankly, I've heard arguments from both sides on this by equally intelligent people. If water's moving through this very quickly and you let the water run for a few moments when you first turn it on, any toxins that's in there, I believe, goes down the drain. It's no big deal. You need to make that decision yourself personally, though. And if you feel it's risky, don't do it. If you're okay with it, then it's your decision to do so. We're okay with it personally. So the water's going to feed in. And then I want you to zoom under and just see really quickly about the drainage system on this. This also is integrated. There is an integrated tailpiece that's on this unit when you buy it. I simply buy a piece of this discharge tubing that's used sometimes for pumps that are attached to above-ground pools. Sometimes they're good for discharging water where water's gone down somewhere it shouldn't, like in a basement or something like that. But it's a flexible, inexpensive, vinylized rubber type of hose that self-collapses when it's not in use. Now I'm going to go ahead and turn on the water here. And here we've got water going. And in just a few moments, it's going to start seeping out. And we just simply put it into an area where the water's going to benefit. Later on, there'll be melons growing all over here. This could be a bedding plant. Got a little bit of buildup happening right there. There we go. I'm just going to straighten this out a little bit. There we go. Notice you've got good flow here. It just discharges. It's not super high pressure. It just floods out very nicely. And the water gets two uses. So that's where the water goes. Now, a couple other just observations here quickly. Number one, what about soap? Is soap okay to put on the ground? Absolutely, especially the later soaps now where the phosphates are being taken out of them. Soap does nothing other than make water wetter, meaning it'll go into the soil faster, make it more available to the plants there. There's not a problem with it. This is a form of gray water. Another thing is you don't do solvents out here. I wouldn't wash paintbrushes or use thinners. You could use paintbrushes, but I'm saying if it's water-based, you could scrub those down. Just saying oil-based or anything where you've got stains and you're using heavy solvents and then washing it down here, that's no good. This is for soaps. Now, I'll have you zoom in here just a little bit closer and a couple of other observations. First, what's the deal with a concrete block? It's just ballast. This is a very lightweight unit. And if you're like I am, you get some windy days. Where we are, there's some days the wind really moves through here. Frankly, I'd like to keep my sink and not donate it to my neighbor. So to make sure that happens, I just put a ballast block in here, and that actually gives me a place to set things when I'm working along. By the way, as you can see, I just keep some of the soaps out here with this. So a little bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid. Of course, you can use whatever you like. I have a little bit of a hand cleaner here. So when I'm working outside, it's really gritty. I just wash up in this sink. It's great. It's a great place to get some refreshing water too when it goes cold. And the other thing that is really good for this is processing vegetables on the fly. We have rhubarb. We have garlic. We have onions. And these are all great to process right here in the sink before they ever even get close to our kitchen. Well, there's a shortcut. Here's some ideas for a great outdoor tool that's easy to build with just moderate skills. I hope you enjoyed the video. I'm Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com. If you like the video, make sure you like it. Make sure you subscribe to our video channel on YouTube. And if you have any comments, insights, any questions, anything you'd like to see us cover in a future edition of videos, that would be great. Give us a write back on our comment section or page. Until the next time, I'm Dirt Farmer Jay.