№ 01Upcycled
Rainwater Harvester Mk.II
One 275-gal Grade B tote, two downspout adapters, a screen insert, and a proper spigot. Up to 8,000 gallons captured per year off a 1,200 sq-ft roof.
PriceFrom $210.00/unit
Read the build →03.5Products · Upcycled
Strange second lives
Strange builds —
unstrange results.
Over the years customers keep asking us to cut, drill, and re-plumb totes for uses we never imagined. So we started building them as stock items. Here are six that consistently ship — and if you've got a weirder idea, we'll build that too.
Form · Quick Quote
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№ 02Upcycled
Aquaponics Starter Tank
Cut-top tote with optional grow-bed conversion. Matches most backyard tilapia or goldfish-and-basil setups. Comes with sight tube.
PriceFrom $260.00/unit
№ 03Upcycled
DEF Pumping Station
Reconditioned tote, stainless camlocks, 12V diaphragm pump kit, and a rain cover. For farms and small fleet yards.
PriceFrom $285.00/unit
№ 04Upcycled
Flood Barrier Kit (4-pack)
Four Grade C totes, strapping, sand-fill instructions, and a bulkhead drain kit. Deploy in 30 minutes, reuse for years.
PriceFrom $140.00/unit
№ 05Upcycled
Emergency Reservoir
275-gal potable-grade tote with a gravity-feed stand, first-flush diverter, and chlorine dosing line. Preppers and homesteaders: yours.
PriceRequest Quote
№ 06Upcycled
Raised Planter Quartet
Four cut-top planters on a single pallet. Paint them whatever color you want. Mint grows absurdly well in these.
PriceFrom $95.00/unit
Shop floor
How an upcycle actually gets built.
Every stock build on this page started as a one-off request we said yes to. Here's what happens between the first phone call and the tarp coming off on your driveway.
- 01Intake & sketchWe talk through the use case — roof area, pump head, water source, climate. A five-minute hand sketch lands in your email the same afternoon.
- 02Donor selectionWe pull a Grade B or C tote from the yard that fits the build. Cage straightness and HDPE clarity are what matter; cosmetic rust is fine for most outdoor jobs.
- 03Cut & plumbReciprocating saw for lids, hole saws for bulkheads, cordless drill for drain taps. All cuts are deburred and the HDPE shavings are captured for our scrap resin bucket.
- 04Fit hardwareBulkheads get silicone-sealed and gasketed. Camlocks, valves, and sight tubes install to the right torque — we've learned which elastomers survive freeze cycles and which don't.
- 05Pressure & rain testFill, hold, observe. Any weep gets chased immediately. For rain-capture builds we also pour a 5-gallon bucket through each inlet to confirm routing.
- 06Log & deliverNew ID in the ledger, photo of the finished build, and either pickup or delivery inside our PA/OH/WV corridor. Anything over 40 miles away gets a strap-down check at load.
Case study — the 40-tote flood berm
In April 2024 a repeat customer in Sharpsburg — a lumberyard roughly a mile off the Allegheny — called about chronic spring flooding on their south lot. The city would not fund a permanent berm and the property owner didn't want pour-in-place concrete. We built a deployable wall.
Donor totes
40 Grade C
Pulled from winter industrial returns — solvent-prior, triple-rinsed at Stage 1 only since these never touch product.
Fill media
Sand / water hybrid
Sand for the lower 40%, water above. Gives weight where it matters and makes the top rows drainable in under 20 minutes.
Strap system
2″ ratchet + eye bolts
Eye bolts through the cage corners, strapped tote-to-tote with 2″ polyester ratchet webbing at 1,100 lb working load.
Deployed length
160 linear feet
Four rows deep at the low end, two rows deep at the high end. Height 46″ — the standard 275 cage dimension.
Assembly time
3 hrs, 2 crew
Forklift sets the bottom course, crew tops and straps. Breakdown is about 40% faster than setup.
Outcome
Three deployments, 2024–25
Lot stayed dry through two 100-yr rain events. Totes returned to our yard between events for winter storage.
Requests we say yes to
Eighty percent of our custom builds come in as phone calls that start with "this is probably stupid, but…" — a partial list of things we have cheerfully made:
- Goat-feed station with a 2″ bottom auger port
- Community-garden drip tower with six zone valves
- Maple-sap gathering rig with a 1½″ top fill boom
- Mobile dog-wash trailer with a 12V on-demand pump
- Brewery waste-catch tank with an inspection sight glass
- Stormwater cistern under a back porch, cut to 40″ tall
- Driveway-deicing brine station with a Viton-lined valve
- Firefighting buffer tank for a volunteer department
- Pottery-studio slip recovery tank with a settle dam
- Boatyard bilge-water capture with oil-water separator plumbing
- Skateboard-ramp drainage reservoir
- Camp-shower reservoir on a wood stand with a sunshade
Requests we politely decline
We don't say no often, but there's a short list where the physics, chemistry, or liability doesn't work out. We'd rather tell you up front than collect a deposit on something we can't stand behind.
Potable drinking water from unknown priors
A Grade C tote with undocumented industrial content isn't a municipal cistern even after a deep clean. We'll sell you a Grade A or rebottled unit for this, or point you at an NSF-rated polyethylene cistern.
Pressurized septic or gray-water distribution
HDPE walls are not rated for continuous pressure cycling above atmospheric. A cracked tote full of effluent is a disaster. Gravity-only, or no.
Fuel storage above 50 gallons indoors
Local fire code and common sense. We'll build you an outdoor diesel day-tank with bund and signage, not an indoor one.
Weight-bearing structural use
Stacked totes can hold weight short-term, but we won't build you a foundation, a deck base, or anything a person will stand on long-term out of used tanks.
Heated chemical reactors
HDPE softens at around 240 °F and stress-whitens far earlier. Anything exothermic or steam-heated belongs in stainless, not composite.
Aquaponics with unlogged priors
Fish are a canary. We'll rebottle or pull a documented Grade A tote for aquaponics — but we won't cut up a mystery tank and hope it holds.
Build your own
DIY starter checklist.
If you'd rather cut and plumb it yourself, here's the five-item list we recommend before the first tool hits the plastic.
- 01A Grade B or C tote with straight cageCosmetic rust is fine. Bent lower tubes aren't — they'll bulge when filled.
- 02A 3″ hole saw and a ½″ bulkhead kitThe hole saw cuts HDPE like cake. The bulkhead is where most DIY builds spring leaks; buy the proper one rather than the cheapest.
- 03A valve matched to your fluid2″ ball for water, butterfly for food, camlock for mobile transfer. Get the right elastomer (see our accessories page).
- 04A way to stabilize the palletLevel ground, gravel pad, or cinder blocks. A filled tote on a tilted pallet will slowly walk the cage joints apart.
- 05A labelPaint pen or adhesive tag. Contents, date filled, and your phone number. Future you will thank present you.