Draining the Tank

Should you ever disregard instructions when you're building something for the first time? Of course not, but somehow a few weeks ago when we were at the hardware store buying supplies for the downspout container garden, we decided to leave out the drain at the bottom. We were already buying pipes and whatnot for the downspout diversion and the overflow pipe and bulkhead assembly (I do enjoy writing "bulkhead assembly."), and it seemed like a simple thing to leave off when the tank already came with a drain plug at the bottom.

Then a couple weeks ago we got a lot of rain, and we were looking at a few inches of water above the substrate level, and we needed to bail it down a bit to actually plant the lovely wetland plants we planned to buy at the Schuylkill Center's native plant sale.

OK, why not just unscrew the drain plug at the bottom? We did have the forethought to put a screen filter on the inside of it (so a jet of gravel and sand wouldn't shoot out the bottom), but the plug has an unfamiliar shape that doesn't fit any wrench we've ever seen. Some Googling pointed me to "bung wrenches" (go ahead, snicker) and "plug wrenches," and some more searching on forums indicates that any square-headed socket wrench head that fits could do the trick, but still, futzing with a 100 gallon steel tank is a lot harder when it's full of 1,000+ pounds of soil, sand, gravel, and water, and it would be nice to have a spigot down there. Next time I go to the hardware store...