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Rainwater harvesting

Author: admin Category: Growing Tags: rainwater harvesting

Wednesday
Jun 17, 2009

Everyone who lives in Ireland knows how much it rains, even when the sun is out! There is no shortage of water in Ireland but fresh drinking water is becoming more and more scarce.

rainshower

A lot of time and money is spent cleaning our tap water to a degree that it is safe for drinking and then its piped to where you live so it seems a bit mad to use drinking water to water the garden when so much is falling out of the sky and being channeled into the gutters where we live.

At home I am using 2 big bins which I have placed under the gutters. Its quite easy to take apart the modular gutters and redirect the roof runoff from the gutter and drains into any kind of storage you can find.

In this photo below I have just taken a section out of the gutter so the water falls into my collection bin and not down into the drain as if it was useless waste.

rainharvest

Having a bin full of water also saves me time when watering in the evenings. I can just plunge the watering can into the water container and fill it in 2 seconds rather than waiting several minutes for the low pressure trickle out of the tap to fill it up.

rainwater

In this photo above the end of the gutter was missing anyway so I didnt have to take apart anything just simply place the bin under the end of the gutter.

The first time I put these 2 bins out they filled overnight!!

We might be experiencing global warming but Ireland certainly isn’t drying out!!

Did you know that there are 250,000 raindrops in 1 litre of water?

Try counting them if you like!!

Comments

Alannah Thorp

July 27th, 2009 at 11:50

Hi Michael,
Great idea to collect rainwater; I know someone who does that. One piece of advice that I’ve heard is to put a plank of wood into the bin of water; then if any animal is unfortunate enough to fall in while trying to get a drink they have a chance of getting back out again.

admin

July 28th, 2009 at 05:38

Hi Alannah,
Thanks for the tip!

Ive been putting nettles into the bins which take 6 weeks to break down and also comfrey leaves which take just 2 weeks to break down, both become a liquid fertiliser for application whilst watering, so when the bins become near full I just close the lid so as not to dilute the potent mix during a rain shower!! A totally manual system for the moment till the sensors are invented!

I do have a few slugs ready to walk the plank though!!!


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