I know for fact this wont be the first summer I have had to fill the butts up with a hose pipe,lucky there is no ban here yet.
I have two large water butts taking rain water off my Green House and they are near to bursting. I am toying with the idea of another two connected to the drain pipe at the rear of the house. I would love to use the garage roof but as it's flat it doesn't lend itself to that purpose..........unless anyone has ideas??
jane that is what i have done i did it for two reasons the cost of water butts and i got fed up of the plastic splitting when the water froze in the butts which doesnt happen with the bins the ice simply rises, i have 2 water butts and 9 bins around the garden all of these have filled up with todays down pour
Average house roof area in the UK is, I think, 30 sq.m. That's handy as there are (roughly) 30 days in a month ... so: 10mm rainfall on 30 sq.m. is 300 Litres, 30 days in a month, so 10 Litres per day, and 10 Litres is approx one watering can full. So for each 10 mm of rainfall in a month you get 10 Litres per day, or one watering can full, on average East Anglia is regarded as pretty dry, but from Apr-Sep we get 40-50mm per month - so 4 - 5 cans-per-day. Trouble is, sometimes we don't get any for a month. If that is enough water [for the average sized garden, with an average sized roof!!] then all that is needed is the ability to store about a month's worth to allow for 4 weeks without rain, so that would be 300 Litres of storage for every 10mm of rainfall. Most of the country gets 40 - 60mm per month (and those parts that get more aren't going to need any watering!), so to catch all the Summer rain it needs between 1,200 - 1,800 litres of storage On that basis the water butts will fill "often enough" during the summer not to run out If that's not enough then storage would need to be increased to store from Winter to use in the Summer too. Average Monthly Rainfall figures available here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/19712000/index.html Rainfall figures: Birmingham 40-60mm Sheffield 55-65mm Stratford 50-60mm Southampton 40-50mm Sevenoaks 45-55mm
Sorry, I just noticed this. This is Dr Spock he is was a paediatrician (deceased) This is Mr Spock a character from "Star Trek"
No, a flat roof really is flat, as shown in the picture below. As you can see, this is not a flat roof, a flat roof is cheaper to construct.
No, there's a down pipe there alright, Kristen. It's just that I recently had new guttering, facias. soffits. and drain pipes put in to replace the old ones and the thought of cutting into a brand new drain pipe makes my eyes [excuse the pun] water. It's either two extra water butts or those industrial containers we were talking about, so I'll have to have a cogitate
Rainwater diverter? There are some that slot into the downpipe (yeah, you will have to cut it ) and then have a hose connected. You can route that to the water butt somewhere else (and probably can make that nice and discrete). I suspect the further you run the hose, unless you can increase the bore from 1/2" to 3/4" or more, that you won't get much pressure out of the end. If you can run the hose downhill to the "ugly tank" then gravity will be on your side
