The height of the water barrel is very important. A rain barrel where the top of the barrel is below the downspout diverter will never direct water back to the gutter pipe when the open top barrel is full. So it will overflow as long as the rain continues. Also, if you use a hose to water directly from the barrel, the water level will need to be higher than the end of the hose. Otherwise, there will be no water pressure and water will not run from the hose. So you may or may not want to put your rain barrel on a pedestal. One more point: you must be sure that a pedestal is stable because a barrel gets very heavy and may break something if it falls.