Rainwater harvesting is simply the collection and saving of rainwater for later use. It’s very easy and everyone should be doing it, you only need a roof and a water butt.
Why bother?
Rain water is better for your plants: it doesn’t have all the chemicals that make tap water safe for humans to drink. Rainwater stored in a butt is warmer than tap water.
We are on a meter, the more water we use the more we have to pay (the annual bill is about £1650). Why pay for something that falls from the sky for free ?
Our water supply is switched off from November to Easter, rainwater is your only option during these months
If you are concerned about your carbon footprint (and you should be) consider that the water company has to use a lot of energy to purify and pump the water to us, we can reduce our carbon footprint by using less tap water and more rainwater.
During periods of heavy rain any water that we retain on site reduces (slightly) the chances of flooding downstream.
How could you do it?
The simplest way is to put a gutter along the side of your shed and arrange a water butt so that when rain water runs off the end of the gutter it drops into the water butt. You can improve your collection by putting a second butt on the other side of the shed. You can make your system as sophisticated as you please, things to consider are:
To reduce carrying heavy water cans, put a water butt near your plants and fill it with a siphon hose from your full water butts
Arrange a second butt which is filled from the overflow from the first, you could have a whole row of them.
IBC tanks occasionally become available and they hold the some volume of water as five barrels
Keep a barrel of rainwater inside your greenhouse/polytunnel which makes the water warm for your seedlings and helps to stabilize the greenhouse temperature
If you need any help or advice please ask John or a Steve.
