Greenhouse help 20 June 2020 at 10:45PM in Greenfingered MoneySaving 3 replies 91 views

Cacran

I have a couple of greenhouses at my allotment.
I have waterbutts. I want to harvest water from the greenhouse gutters. Don't feel like I want o buy a kit as they are very expensive.
I am looking for ideas to do it on the cheap.
Has anyone got tips for me?

Apodemus

You have water butts and you have gutters? If so, what else do you need?  Just let the water flow off the end of the gutter into the butt, or if that leads to an unacceptable amount of splashing, rig up a rope or chain that the water can run down into the butt.   All the rest of the kit is nice to have but not essential at its most basic level.  

You will have to lift buckets of water out of the butt rather than having a tap, you will have it overflowing when it rains heavily and you will have mosquitoes...  Decide which of these you are not willing to put up with, then you can introduce the necessary refinements.

-taff

I thought about doing that to mine but have rigged up some temporary guttering under the garage eaves for now. But, when I was thinking about i had thought I would need a piece of sturdy but supple plastic to fit in one gutter end and silicone that in to provide a stop, then attach another piece either of shaped plastic or thin metal to the other end to form a spout, again, either with silicone or a piece of pliable metal [ lead or some shaped copper] that was riveted to the long part of the gutter underneath and again siliconed on the upper and lower parts of the rivet . That would have been enough to let it fall into a water butt/bucket/barell.

I also thought about blocking the ends of gutter each side of the greenhouse and introducing a piece of guttering to run underneath each spouted end attached to a  bracket with rivets and the underside of the guttering with rivets, and the guttering could be lengthened to fall  according to where the water butt would be. All this relies on you either having a dead straight and level greenhouse or knowing which way the fall runs.

Also, when I had water butts in the large garden I had before, I had six large blue barrels in a line with a small piece of tubing pushed through drilled holes at the very top of the barrel  [through the sides if you see what I mean] so when each one was full, it would flow into the next. I kept the lids on the barrels so I would be mosquito free and just removed whichever lid from the barrel I was currently taking water from and replaced it.

-taff

You could build a dtand for whatever you're using as a waterbutt and attach your own tap to it, they're vailable online. I just made a brick stand for my waterbutt [the first one , it came without] works well enough. I also bought a tap online for my plant food bin, [ a smallish recycling bin with a handle that locks the lid down, aquired from a skip] and I report that it doesn't leak