I am not always one for saving the environment and recycling. I know that I should be but it is not always easy. However I did like the idea of having a water butt installed on the side of the house. I have been pleasantly surprised at how easy the whole process has been. In the UK many homes over the next few years will find that the water authorities will be installing water meters to our homes and we will be charged by the volume of water that we use, so installing a water butt to collect rain water is something that I would recommend to any home owner whether you are on a water meter or not.
I am not on a water meter and I think it unlikely that we will be for some time however I have found in a very short time that it is easy to collect your own rain water, it is better for your plants, both inside and out of the home, even my two dogs have taken to drinking the rain water in preference to the stuff that comes from the water companies.
Buying
Seeing a rain water collecting kit comprising of a water butt, rain diverter and stand advertised in a magazine spurned me to looking around the local hardware stores, hunting for a bargain. I also looked on ebay but with the postage they seemed expensive. You need to buy a purpose built water butt that has a lid that children cannot just lift to peer in. An open butt without a lid could be a disaster to a child. So do look out for the child safe ones, even if children do not visit your home, an incident may occur and you would never forgive yourself.
I was able to buy a 220 litre water butt and stand, with rain water diverter for about £38.00 (Pounds sterling). You need to have a stand with your barrel so that you can use the tap to fill watering cans and buckets etc. It is a child safe one, where the lid has to be twisted to remove.
This was not my total expenditure on the project please see details in the ‘how I fitted my rain collecting water butt’ page
Fitting
I thought that installing my rain collecting water butt would be a walk in the park, however this turned out to be a bit of a fiddle and I had to go back on myself a few times. If you are reading this then take heed and you will save yourself a little time.
First of all try and do this on a nice warm day and not a cold February evening. You need to choose a place for your water butt near to a down pipe. In the UK the vast majority of guttering down pipes are square or round (68mm round) and made of plastic or UPVC. The rain diverter kit that I bought will work with square or round down pipes. We happen to have white round pipe.
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| Installed water butt |
The obvious location for my water butt was at the nearest down pipe to the vegetable patch. I set about measuring the correct place to cut the down pipe. This was done with the aid of a permanent marker pen and long spirit level. You must follow the instructions that come with the diverter or you could have the butt overflowing after heavy rain. Cutting the down pipe was a bit of a fiddle with a large hacksaw. They are very difficult to get a straight line and as you may notice in the photo my cutting is not too straight. (I will correct this on a warm summer afternoon) Also we could not get a white diverter but this too will be corrected in the summer with some paint.
You have to cut out about an inch of pipe and then pull the pipe away from the wall to slip the diverter into place. It was at this point that I realized that cutting the pipe had made it very unstable so a friend nipped off to the local builders merchants for two down pipe clips to secure the down pipe in place when I had finished the installation.
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| rain diverter |
The rain diverter is a clever little device that diverts rain water to the water butt until it is full and then when the butt is full the water will flow down the down pipe. So with the rain diverter in place I turned my attention to the butt. The water butt came with a tap that installs at the bottom of the barrel. There is a rubber washer and I thought that that alone would make a water tight seal. (it does not). So using the washer in the inside I fitted the tap (hand tight as the tap is made of plastic). Having thought that was done correctly I cut out the 1 inch hole for the filling pipe, fitted the pipe attachment (with just the washer again) and after measuring the correct length for the filling pipe finally fitted it all together. By then my friend had arrived with the two down pipe securing clips and I was able to secure the down pipe in place.
That night we had rain and I eagerly went out to check how much water had been collected, to my dismay not much. The reason for this is it had all leaked out of the tap connection. So what water I had collected had to be tipped away and I dried the butt out and fitted the tap again using silicone sealant on both the inside and outside of the butt. I left the butt for 24 hours for the silicone to go off, and fitted it all back together the next day.
We had rain again and to my amazement the next morning the barrel was full to the top. I was astonished. 220 litres of rain water in one night. The fact that the butt was full to the top brought to light the fact that I should also have used silicone to secure the filler pipe connection and on both ends of the feed pipe as it was dripping constantly.
So again I had to pour a lot of the water away and wait for the top part of the barrel to dry out before using silicone on everything. Now the butt is finally water tight, no drips and one night of rain filled it to the brim.
Continued >> on the next page
