How to collect water from trickle stream for later use?

[greenthumbbeginner]

The easy way is to buy a small water butt and have it flow in there with an overflow. I could do that if there are not any other suggestions but I was wondering if I could achieve the same result without buying anything else.

I have an abundance of clay just below my feet on the land so wondered if I can fashion something out of that.

What I have done so far is made a small ditch to direct the little trickle from the top of the hill down to near the middle where I would like to collect it.

I made a kind of platform, not sure of the correct water term, so the earth forms a shelf and then will drop down at the correct height to fall into the 10l water container I would like to fill. Also I have a 45 degree curved shower pipe which was spare from my mum's garage so it will direct the water into the hole in the container when the container is underneath.

This works however very very slowly. It probably takes around 30 minutes to fill the 10l bottle.

I am wanting a way to make a collection pool above with an overflow so it would direct away the excess, such that when an aperture is opened it will come out faster and fill the container quicker.

As above, the water butt way, or another water container with tap would work but is the easy way out. I prefer to try and think of solutions with existing materials and if I haven't found a practical way then I would be ok with buying something.

I had a play around yesterday but didn't figure it out yet. Hoping I might get some more inspiration here.

I can make a collection point with clay but wondering how I would manage the part at the bottom the let the water out withou resorting to buying other materials. I could use the metal 'spout' I already have placed at the bottom but how to make a plug for when not in use? Clay would not work for that I guess since it is so brittle when dry. Could I make one from wood from a branch of the trees already in situ? If not perhaps a small compromise of sourcing a cork.

I would have thought a wooden bung would work? They didn't have cork in medieval times and would have used softwoods available at the time wouldn't they for all the kegging they did for numerous products?

[Nicos]

(Not very ecological, but how about using a narrow plastic bottle with a screw on lid?)

As for wooden bungs, it’s easy enough to whittle down a piece of wood with a sharp knife. That would be my choice if the neural tubing is already in situ

[greenthumbbeginner]

(Not very ecological, but how about using a narrow plastic bottle with a screw on lid?)

As for wooden bungs, it’s easy enough to whittle down a piece of wood with a sharp knife. That would be my choice if the neural tubing is already in situ

Hi, what is neural tubing?

I was working on this today and more experimentation with different things. I did at one point do just like you suggested, before seeing this post and coming to the same conclusion myself. I had an empty olive oil bottle.

Worked great as to the spout however the increased pressure on the containment part was causing the clay to almost want to burst out and cracks were forming around the bottle.

I then thought clay is probably not a good long term idea as it will just wash away when it rains won't it?

I then suddenly had a light bulb of a much simpler solution. Why not just dig a hole/sump in the path of the stream then I can just dip the container in to fill it. This avoids a lot of the technical issues. In this case the soil being heavy clay is advantageous as is is mostly none pourous so just digging in without any other skin I am thinking should suffice.

[Nicos]

Sorry - that should have said metal tubing …autocorrected

[Nicos]

A sump is a brill idea!
Might be worth covering with metal mesh to stop wildlife- like hedgehogs from falling in? And a stick reaching the bottom to help anything smaller to climb out?

[Nicos]

You could possibly make the sump into a type of self filling / draining pond at a later date maybe?

[greenthumbbeginner]

A sump is a brill idea!
Might be worth covering with metal mesh to stop wildlife- like hedgehogs from falling in? And a stick reaching the bottom to help anything smaller to climb out?

Oh indeed I was giving that considerable thought while making it.

Put a couple of sticks in there for now but, presuming they can swim, they should not have difficulty getting out as the lip is almost at ground level once the pool has filled.

I was giving thought to in case it was empty too so the sticks. I thought I could even make it like a V or make the northernmost part where the trickle enters very gentle so they could climb out there too.

I presume wildlife are well versed with traversing bodies of water, sometimes deep, in every day life such that this should not prove any more of a challenge.

[Snoop Puss]

If you have a lot of water to deal with, I wonder if a system that's popular here called an acequia might be useful. The ones in my area of Spain are much more informal than the huge lined channels that you'll find in Wikipedia and the like.

Essentially, a pond is used to collect water from a spring or other source. In your case it could be water simply drained off the land via channels. The pond is positioned above the land to be irrigated.

A single channel (the acequia itself) is then dug as an outlet from the pond and runs down through the land to be irrigated. In informal acequias, the opening from the pond into this channel tends just to be a rock and rags to block the gaps around it. It's surprising how little water escapes in the ones I've seen.

Other smaller channels are then dug off to the sides of the main channel to divert water from that main channel into beds. Depending on the lie of the land, these beds may be lower than the channel or on the same level. In the latter case, plants are grown on earth mounded up in the middle, with the water pooling in depressions excavated around the mound.

Each side channel is similarly blocked by a rock and rags so that water only flows to the bed it serves when required. And rocks and rags are used to block the main channel to ensure water flowing down it is diverted into beds where it is required rather than simply flowing on down.

Excavating the pond and channels is a lot of work, but it's a system that will last so long as blockages or silt is removed every now and then. There's a system below my land that was in use for generations. Sadly no longer, as the man who worked the veg plot there is now very elderly. He used to do maintenance work on it one day in spring and that would see him right for the year.

If you wanted to be more sophisticated and capture more water, you could have a pond at the bottom and pump water from there up to your top pond using a solar pump or even a 12-volt pump and a decent car battery.

[greenthumbbeginner]

If you have a lot of water to deal with, I wonder if a system that's popular here called an acequia might be useful. The ones in my area of Spain are much more informal than the huge lined channels that you'll find in Wikipedia and the like.

Essentially, a pond is used to collect water from a spring or other source. In your case it could be water simply drained off the land via channels. The pond is positioned above the land to be irrigated.

A single channel (the acequia itself) is then dug as an outlet from the pond and runs down through the land to be irrigated. In informal acequias, the opening from the pond into this channel tends just to be a rock and rags to block the gaps around it. It's surprising how little water escapes in the ones I've seen.

Other smaller channels are then dug off to the sides of the main channel to divert water from that main channel into beds. Depending on the lie of the land, these beds may be lower than the channel or on the same level. In the latter case, plants are grown on earth mounded up in the middle, with the water pooling in depressions excavated around the mound.

Each side channel is similarly blocked by a rock and rags so that water only flows to the bed it serves when required. And rocks and rags are used to block the main channel to ensure water flowing down it is diverted into beds where it is required rather than simply flowing on down.

Excavating the pond and channels is a lot of work, but it's a system that will last so long as blockages or silt is removed every now and then. There's a system below my land that was in use for generations. Sadly no longer, as the man who worked the veg plot there is now very elderly. He used to do maintenance work on it one day in spring and that would see him right for the year.

If you wanted to be more sophisticated and capture more water, you could have a pond at the bottom and pump water from there up to your top pond using a solar pump or even a 12-volt pump and a decent car battery.

Great advice thanks!

Yes I am pretty well versed in 12v systems having done the electrics for my van habitation system. I had thought of how I might apply electricity to the land at some point however the channel, like my sump plan seems perfectly simple and effective. No point overcomplicating and as the land is on a gentle southerly slope might as well take advantage of that.

While I am waiting to get my seeds I had actually started thinking about how I would go about watering and this is good to plan now so that I can think about locating the beds and channels.

Oh and I find directing water great fun too!

[Snoop Puss]

I really admired the acequia system down the valley. I've seen one carved out of stone thought to date to back before the Romans, though the Arabs did amazing waterworks.

Hope you have fun with your chosen approach. I spent a year living in a van that my husband and I sorted, and Nicos has a camper van that she and her husband fitted out. So you're talking to people who love and appreciate ingenuity.

[Nicos]

^^^^ so very true Snoop.
This sounds like a smashing project…do keep us updated…and pick all our brains- we’re happy to try and help out if we can!