Sunday, May 16, 2021
Rainwater harvesting – at last!
We have finally got round to doing something we have been talking about for years – we have set up a rainwater harvesting system on the polytunnel. We have real problems of water at the farm and this year it may be worse because we have more people and have created more raised beds all of which will need watering if we have another dry summer like the last one. Or is that tempting fate?!
So we sent out a call for help and ended up with a group of enthusiastic volunteers, keen to pit their wits against a curving flexible plastic polytunnel. J came up with a master plan and once we’d collected together the means to build it, the lads made a start. We try to use what we have got, rather than what we haven’t got (at one point E raced home and came back triumphantly with some random lengths of gutter which had been cluttering up his garden for decades) but luckily we got some money through a grant* to buy some timber.
It took two days in the end, but finally, when C went up the ladder with a watering can and ceremonially poured water into the brand new gutter running along the polytunnel, it gushed along the length of the gutter and flowed into the big container (IBC) we’d positioned at the end – hoorah! That evening it rained a bit and the following day we found about ten inches of water in the IBC, equal to around 250 litres! Success!
There were teething troubles, inevitably. The day of the big wind, an intrepid investigator found that the gutters had blown off and the plastic was flapping around. Another day of work… Another night of rain… and the IBC was full! Hmm, now what happens when there is more rain? Where does the overflow go? ‘Dig another pond’, suggested L gleefully – this is a man who loves digging and feels restricted by our adherence to the ‘no dig’ philosophy we have recently adopted at the farm.
So now the search is on for more IBCs to link to the system. Watch this space!
*Many thanks to Transition: Bounce Forward for a micro-grant
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