As well as making sure we have enough water for our animals, we also need water for our vegetables. This year, we have had to water seedlings and pots every day for weeks.
The problem is our water supply is a hillside stream which fills a tank used by 4 houses. In dry weather, the spring shrinks to a trickle so we have to be careful with our water. We already have a couple of rainwater butts installed, but these soon empty. We have also ordered a polytunnel (growing vegetables outdoors here is challenging) and that will need to be kept watered too.
The answer was to purchase a large water butt. We identified a spot and bought the biggest we could put there, a whopping 1,500 litres. It was delivered but only to the bottom of our track so the first job was to get it up here. It’s at moments like these I am thankful we have our tractor with its front loader.
Armed with ratchet straps, I set off, attached the tank and brought it up.
Being too far from the downpipe, we needed a feeder system and for that I installed a small slimline water butt. It took a few concrete blocks to get it to the right level.
I also had to put in a level base for the big tanks. Time consuming but not that tricky, this was all soon done.
The final problem was that the water divertor supplied did not fit onto the cast iron downpipes we have here. It took a couple of days to think of a solution. In the end, I took the cast iron pipe off below the divertor and replaced it with a plastic pipe of similar dimensions. Job done, almost. Cutting through the cast iron pipe took a while. I started with an angle grinder with a metal cutting disc. That lasted about 5 minutes before it shredded. So it was back to the old fashioned way, manual hack saw.
In the end, it was all done and plumbed in. This latter job was complicated by the close proximity of corn flowers that were attracting many bees. I am allergic to bee stings so didn’t really want to get stung. Thankfully, they ignored me, even when I reached right across the flowers to pick things up I had dropped.
Now we just need some rain to fill it up.
