Selfsufficientish.com

Excellent news Muddy!

May your butt stay full.

Chickenlady wrote:It is true, then, that necessity is the mother of invention.

Nope, I think you'll find that that's Frank Zappa

Top stuff on the diy water butt mate. I ordered one on-line a while ago and am still waiting for delivery. Shame because I've missed out on some lovely downpours recently

Good stuff Muddy.

I was going to ask about how you would deal with a surplus of water, then I got to the bottom of the thread and saw that luckly it seems to be flowing over at the front of the box.

Couple of idea's to extend the life of it..possibly.

1. You are right it's the UV that will be the down fall of the PE sheet. You could overcome this by putting a wooden cover over the butt? Keep all the crap falling in as well.

2. You said you currently drop your can in to get the water out and this might damage the PE liner. You could try dropping a bit of hose pipe into the butt filling it with water, cover the end up with your finger and put it back into the can , thus syphoning it in. It wont be as quick, but it might mean I'm right about voting it to last at least to the end of the summer!.

Last week my current butt was empty so I managed to get a 220L plastic drum from work, after 2 days of cleaning it out I was ready to install the day before we where due to get some rain. Put a joing pipe from my new drum to my old butt at the base, so really just increasing the capacity. All was good, and it rained heavily all night long, rushed out in the morning to check out the level, only to find the bloody joining pipe was leaking badly.
This irked me so much I decided to empty the water out ...there was a lot. just to get some mastic on the join. We haven't had any bloody rain since!.


Edit, we've had rain and it's still dripping!.

This is the B&Q £4 joining kit which I do not recommend. THe problem is the spiral pipe you push/screw onto the connector it is no way water tight,and adding mastic around it hasn't done much.

Muddy,
How's this going?

Except for the fact that it ran out of water a week ago, it seems fine. No sign of any leaks, and the polythene sheet, thin though it is, is showing no signs of deteriorating.

Just need a day or two of good rain to fill it up again.

One month from last post. Hows it all going?

Davina

Well it hasn't rained in Berks since a month ago so I'm guessing the butt is still empty. Unless Muddypause has diverted his greywater pipe from the bathroom, in which case have a gold star and go to the top of the class.

If (okay, i'm thinking when really) the plastic leaks, a permanent solution might be carpet and pond liner- don't give up and go for a plastic water butt- the wooden version looks so good, I'm thinking of building one myself!
Mike.

Wow. V impressed!

*insert generic butt joke here*

When the water butt is full due to our sporadic weather, that could happen in a day or 2, what happens then?

Until today, either I filled every available container, or it simply overflowed (or I bailed it out).

But, as of today, it now has the new, improved, Muddypause Plug-o-matic; an improvised stopper at the top of the downpipe, on a lever mounted on the adjacent TV aerial mast, with two strings to open and close it from ground level.

The plug itself is just a wodge of polyurathane foam (may need trimming later) that I sprayed into the top of the outlet, prevented from sticking by a smearing of wax.

Seems to work, too.

This is to block the collection of water?

*mutter mutter*

Where does the surplus go?

I presume it goes down another downpipe?! Or you may have the same problem we had when we had a torrential downpour in July - into your house!

Muddypause,

Like your butt - An excellent bit of improvisation.

Undeservedly it seems to have become the butt of all jokes.

I got very enthusiastic about water butts in early April, and was amazed that just a night of steady rain could fill a 200 litre butt, from just one half of my roof.

See my blog entries 9th/10th April

http://sustburbia.blogspot.com/

I collected over 1000 litres in 3 wet nights.

Why is it that if I can collect all this water in suburban drought-stricken Surrey, that East Surrey Water Co can't manage their water collection business?

Perhaps it's because their senior management have not got enough experience in water management, or possibly the collection of water eats into profits....

"You mean we have to collect the stuff too?" - duh??

Hi Muddypause
I think your wooden water butt is a great idea! So when I had to buy a new liner for my pond, I got a larger one and used the off cut to make a wooden water butt 7* 3* 2.5
When full 330 gallons. The catchment area of my roof is approximately 800 sq feet with the neighbour’s roof. With the recent rain it’s half full!
The extra pond liner cost £15 extra, wood nothing.

Thanks steve