..is a rather contrived opening to my latest exploits on the plot!
I finally emptied the huge blue water butt of the remaining crap which had been unearthed during my overhaul of the site. It took 7 large rubble sacks and plenty of grunting and swearing to get it all bagged up, but it now means that the blue water butt is free for filling!
Except....umm....I don't have any means to fill it other than the rainfall itself.
If only I had structure from which i could harvest water....?
The problem with this structure is that not only does the roof lift, the front doors also open. And to add insult to an already tricky task, the roof latches down over the door lock using that flap you can see in the centre..so anything across the front permanenetly isn't going to work. However you can see there's a decent slant on the roof and the surface area is approx 3 times the surface area of the butt alone, meaning if that I can think of something, I'll be able to collect a total of 4x the amount that the butt would collect naturally...
I had the bright idea of having 2 separate gutters which "overlapped" in the centre, one above the other effectively. And this is what I decided on...
Firstly I added the gutter hooks. They are surprisingly well attached even though the box is plastic.
So far so good, until you consider what's going to happen when you open the doors... the hinges are not on the corners, so they will only open a few inches before the gutter snags on the frame.
What a gutter!! Back to the drawing board and the realisation that the only option that I had left was to make the the guttering completely removable.
Once the idea was in my head it was a lot easier than I expected to execute.
Here she is all fitted up and ready to go. Just one road test to ensure my guttering slants down into the bin correctly....
Excellent! Also, what you cannot see here is that I made a holster for the gutter pipe, so that when I arrive on site and remove the gutter by gently sliding it out(which is actually very easy indeed), I have a fixed vertical holster to put it in, to prevent losing or damaging it while working. It's vertically fixed to the rear right corner, on the right of the shot below. It keeps the pipe vertical and out of the way of moving lid, doors and wheelbarrows!
Tidy! I'm hardly going to be watering the entire site with what it'll catch but i'm already 4 x better off than I was, and it gives me something I didn't have previously - access to untreated water. The water in Stevenage is extremely hard so I need to be careful with acid loving trees.... this water will doubtfully be plentiful, but it will give me the opportunity to water judiciously
Total cost: £14
All I need now is a lid to prevent evaporation.
I have some exciting news but I'll save that for another time
Thanks for reading!
