filling a water butt from a sentry shed

I have what I believe is called a sentry shed on my allotment, tall but only about 1m wide and about 60cm deep. Might be slightly out on those measurements I am holding my hands out here to try and work it out! I was thinking of installing a slim water butt, or a narrow cattle trough for dunking a can in, to catch as much water as possible but am I really going to get enough run off from what is a rather weeny roof? It wont be cheap to install as I have to put in the gutter and downpipe, and source something narrow enough to fit in an awkward space, so I need to know if it will be worth the effort. We're in SW London. Anyone had any experience of these? Thanks all.

 

Taking the area of roof as 100cmx60 cm and the average annual rainfall for Wimbledon Sw19 as 60cm, you should be able to collect 0.6cu metres per annum, 600 litres. Clearly there are possibilities of loss by bouncing and if it were to fall on one occasion, overspilling. Presuming its a single pitch roof a metre of guttering and 2 brackets should suffice. Stop end/downspout/pipe are luxury additions.
I would be keeping an eye out for a suitable skip and butts can be sourced in a similar manner.

 

Well thank you for the maths! That's brilliant. I will look in skips for guttering, good idea, but I only have about 30cm width to play with for the water butt so I might have to do a bit of trawling to find one suitable, but I'm really pleased and will give it ago. In the winter I can divert some of the water onto the nearby tree as I expect the butt will fill up quickly - at home I put a tap and descending hose about 4 inches from the top of my 2 butts to divert water when they fill down to a nearby shrub. All good stuff. And all because I got a blueberry plant in a pot and was told I had to water it with rainwater!

 

Hi if you get a barrel or trough , make sure the barrel has a lid and the trough either covered in chicken wire or a piece of wood so anything that falls in can get back out

Spruce

 

I'd go a bit further and suggest that any source of stagnant water has a fine mesh cover to stop mossie activity

 

yes I have learnt the hard way with mozzies in the waterbutt at home when I left the lid off one day! Little beggers were in like flynn!

 

Unless you just have a few pot plants I think the amount of water you collect wont be worth bothering.

 

A little tip I was given is put a few drops of cooking oil in the water butt and keep a tight lid on.