Butt treatment

[Jamesey1981]

Excuse me amusing myself with the thread title, just wondering what everyone on here uses to keep the water in their rainwater butts from growing too much algae and going stagnant.

I presently use hozelock water butt treatment which works really well for the aforementioned aims, but I have absolutely no idea what is in it, this is fine for watering my plants and washing my car but if I wanted to make that water drinkable I have unknown chemicals it it which obviously isn't good.
I'm sure any ill effects would manifest after I would have been in serious trouble from dehydration if it came to it so I would be better off purifying and drinking it than not, but there must be a better way.

My first thought is plain old chlorine bleach which would probably work quite well, no idea how much to use though, I have two sizes of water butt, 150l and 350l and they only harvest rain water, no grey water.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[jansman]

Empty it and clean it regularly ( couple of times a year) and just put a good dollop of plain,thin bleach in it.

[Yorkshire Andy]

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://ima ... wiEVBqVt3Q


Looks like it's made of natural stuff and is none toxic

[pseudonym]

Empty it and clean it regularly ( couple of times a year) and just put a good dollop of plain,thin bleach in it.

Yep, I use mine to pressure wash the patio and refill.

[Jamesey1981]

That's for that, useful info.

Looks like the treatment I use is fine then, I'll try the bleach and see if that works as well before buying my next lot though as the bleach will be a lot cheaper.

Good to know that I would be able to use the water I have though, I have 850l when they're all full and that's a lot of water to have sitting about if I can't drink it if I need to.

[Deeps]

That's for that, useful info.

Looks like the treatment I use is fine then, I'll try the bleach and see if that works as well before buying my next lot though as the bleach will be a lot cheaper.

Good to know that I would be able to use the water I have though, I have 850l when they're all full and that's a lot of water to have sitting about if I can't drink it if I need to.

Wow ! That is a lot of water, I keep a couple hundred litres of potable and have a pond (about a thousand litres) and water butt at the house and plenty ways to purify. Living in Scotland water generally isn't an issue, its making it potable that is key. ]

I've used the cap of bleach in the past but I've also just topped up the 25L containers with fresh water and not had any issues. I've not tried to purify the pond/collected water although Mr Sawyer seems to suggest it wouldn't be an issue.

[ForgeCorvus]

Yep, plain old thin bleach is probably the simplest. Its basically what the water companies use anyhow, just a much more concentrated version.
Thick bleach is just thin bleach with thickeners in it.... And its the thickeners I'd be worried about as I don't know what they are.

Dose heavy rather then light, as Chlorine is non-persistent (exposure to air and light break it down)

[dazthechippy]

don't forget some kind of in line filter to stop the chod getting in your butt so to speak.

i'm rejigging my set up at the moment - im looking at aquarium filters that I can cut to size to fit - they come in various grades and are a bit more hard wearing and easier to clean than using a pair of old tights.

even if its a clean roof with no moss its surprising that you still get a bit of chod ending up in the butt - things like acorns that birds have dropped and a few leaves - that to me means the water is only potable after a fair bit of processing which I may not have the time to do when i need to..

[Arwen Thebard]

A bit off topic perhaps.... we have been experimenting with trying to use less water in the garden, we can't make it rain so we have to use what we have a sparingly as possible. We have two greenhouses so we split the seedlings and plants 50% - 50% between them and watered one greenhouse with conventional watering can and rose, the other using a 5 litre bottle with spray attachment.

So far the one with the 5 litre spray system has used approx 75% LESS water, based on what is left in the water butt. There appears to be no difference between the growth rates, we had suspected that we were not using enough water with the spray compared to the can with rose.

The spray is far easier as you dont have to lift the heavy watering can to reach the upper shelf, but it does take longer using the spray, maybe an extra 10 mins so not worth worrying about, and we are definitely going to continue.

Spray Bottle.jpg (7.14 KiB) Viewed 4598 times

[Jamesey1981]

I have little catcher things to stop any big grot getting into the butts. At the end of the day I'm going to filter it if I need to drink it so it'll be safe, just might taste a bit odd.