Water Butts for the garden

[diamond lil]

Kindly posted by the gnole -


Has good info on installing a water butt, problem is it is the usual open top water butt with a badly fitting lid which will allow the water to get contaminated.

So, what you need are the clamp top barrels, so the only way in for the water or anything else is down the diverter pipe, and the only way out is through a tap at the bottom.

inside I would add a piece of plastic pipe with a high denier stocking inside it to collect any debris that might come down the diverter pipe.

This quality of water will be easy enough to put through a purifying filter or boiled for consumption.

Water costs about 0.108p/ltr or about £1.09 per thousand ltrs or 220 gallons.

Average toilet flush in the UK is 9ltrs if you have an old style cistern or 6ltrs with the new ones so in English that is between 1.5 and 2 gallons per flush approximately.

So if you want to cut your water bills change your toilet cistern to a low quantity flush and then get some big storage butts and re-plumb the house for using rain water in the cisterns. Work out how many times a day you flush as well, use a bucket for peeing in and pour this down the pan once a day and flush, for number two's flush every time.

Hope that helps

[the-gnole]

You missed out the link Diamond Lil

http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/templates ... r_butt.jsp

[diamond lil]

ooops sorry. I thought I could jsut move the entire post but some of it erm fell off.

[diamond lil]

Actually thats a good page on there, I will post that in my other forums, might help somebody else down south.

[the-gnole]

http://sale.donkiz.co.uk/sales/plastic_ ... ipping.htm

For a supplier of the barrels

[axelt123]

i like the idea of having a tank underground to store it then use it to flush the loo if u on a metre

axel

[the-gnole]

It sounds easy doesn't it. But it isn't that simple, you need to know how much water to store, and what to do if/when it runs out before it rains again, we had 30% less rain last year than the norm.

So how many times a day do we flush, then times that by? a week, a month, a quarter, a year?

You also need to have a top tank to pump the rainwater into so it can gravity feed the cisterns and nothing else, you need electrical solenoid valves to open the mains water supply if the bottom tank fails to deliver or runs dry.

It certainly isn't a simple job, nor a cheap one if you do it properly and not rely on Mr Heath Robinson

[diamond lil]

Well... the place to start would be the beginning anybody who might be affected, read up on water butts and check that link, and then maybe start with a couple in the garden and see how you go .

[axelt123]

they are ever so easy to set up i have two 100 litre and one 50litre butts which stay fairly full most of the year. These are run off of sheds not the main house.

axel

[diamond lil]

O very good - what kind of roofs are on the sheds axel ? How do you get the water collected - can you take a pic ? Or explain to me in wee short words lol