Water Butts

December is a good month for washing down your greenhouse if it’s empty, or insulating it if you have plants in it.  But it’s also a good month for thinking about how to make it easier to use next year.  One possibility to consider is installing a water-butt to save on carrying and using mains water.  They are widely available and soon pay back their cost in convenience and saved water-charges.  It’s amazing how much rainwater falls on even a small roof each year.

It’s easy to buy a kit comprising a tank with child-proof lid and water-tap, a base to stand it on so it’s high enough to fit a watering-can under the tap, and a rainwater diverter that fits into a downpipe.  If you have a polytunnel it will be difficult or impossible to harvest rainwater from the cladding, but Polydome is working on the problem and in the meantime there may be a downpipe on a building nearby that you could use.  Glasshouses usually have gutters but may not have downpipes, so you may need to run a short length of hose from the gutter into the water-butt.  Make sure that the ground under the base is dead level and even to keep the water-butt stable: every litre of water weighs a kilo and a full butt could seriously injure someone if it fell on them.  I put a concrete patio-slab under ours and it worked well.  Use plumber’s tape when screwing the tap into the bottom of the butt, and don’t over-tighten it or you might wring the threads.

If the water-butt is too low for filling watering cans you can buy an electric pump to power a hose or irrigation system, or move the water to where you want it.