water butts

[mick.boyes]

Dear editor – In many gardening mags inc Grow your Own to which I subscribe to, it frequently linking up water butts so the overflow from one fills the other. May I suggest that the butts be linked at the bottom thus allowing the butts to filled and emmtied from a single source as the water will always find its own level.

Mick

[Two_Sheds]

Mick, I think you meant to email the letters page? That would be a separate email address (I don't get the mag, so I can't give that to you, but you'll find it)

[SarzWix]

I've edited the original post to remove address details.

[arpoet]

As i see it, the down side of linking butts at the bottom is that is one leaks then they all leak... or you leave the tap dripping and the next day they are all empty.
I collect water from the house roof into a large butt that overflows when full into the next, and so on. Each has a tap that will take a hosepipe so i can move the water down the garden to the butts next to the greenhouse.
Roger

[zazen999]

I was just going to say that - if one goes you've lost the lot.

[taff]

yuo bend less if you fill in sequence too

[Feral007]

Oh I've been wondering about this - I like the idea of a tap on each one too. Thanks

[Two_Sheds]

I could never get the taps to fit without leaking (Wilko)

I link mine with old hosepipe

4butts-400 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[arpoet]

I got my plastic butt taps from Wickes, TS. As long as you have a rubber washer on each side and the plastic tightenening nut as tight as you can get, it should not leak. Mine have never leaked. They have also survived that harsh winter with water in.
Roger

[Feral007]

I have some hard plastic water butts that the lid comes off but I'd need a small child to crawl in and do up a nut at the back. But I also have two newer drums that are slightly softer plastic (so will prob last longer in the cold/baking heat) but only have two bungs in the top so no way to get down into the bottom even with a small child.
I've been around the hardware stores, the camping store and the rural store. All the taps are screw in ones and I wanted a push in one that would make a self fitting hole. Not happening. One of the guys at the rural store has offered to drill a hole in them somewhere/somehow if I bring them in. But a lot of the fittings here are for 1 1/2 inch poly pipe, so I'd need to buy another couple of fittings and then a tap to connect a hose to. Frankly, I'm wandering if moving the shed to the top of the garden so the butts can collect the water and then I just tip it over and let it run down hill might be easier!

[taff]

cut a hole in the top and put your watering can in that way. Cut some piping to fit around the edge of the bit you cut out, slice it down the middle, then you can slide that back round the bit you cut out so it will fit fairly closely again.
Or put some tubing in the butt, get the water to come out of the end, then when you've finished filing hwatever it is you fill, put a cork in it or something [yeah, I know...] to keep the pipe full and hang it back on the side with a hook or something.

[Feral007]

Thanks Taff - not sure about the tubing making the top fit on again; but the tubing in the butt might be an option on some of them.

I think two sheds had the picture of the barrels in a row with tubing on the top of them. But they had to be on flat ground?

I don't have any flat ground - it is the snowy 'mountain's.
I've asked at the rural shop and the guys there are going to drill a hole in one and fit a tap for me if it's possible. But I'm looking at having a row if I can.
Can I get them to 'gravity feed' from one barrel to the next on a slight downward slope - but do it with out me having to suck the water up the tube in the first place? And having open barrels is probably not best near fruit trees here as we will have fruit bats and bats can mean deadly diseases now. So all water is meant to be covered.

So if I have one covered with a downpipe feeding water into it, and one or two hooked up with hosepipe and a tap in the last one - how do I hook up the hosepipe so it would flow down into the tapped on on the end of the line? See I knew I should have listened in science.

[veggiechicken]

Am I missing something Feral, but won't gravity do that for you, if each butt is lower than the preceding one in the line and the highest is the one with the downpipe feed?

[taff]

yup^
mine are on a very slight angle. I've drilled just under the rim, and just forced a short piece of tubing through each hole, so they all only fill when the preceeding one is full. You can just about see the tubing betwen the two middle ones
http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...o-barrels.html

[Feral007]

ok good, just that it said somewhere that the butts had to be at exactly the same height and that didn't work in my head as everything free is gravity fed, and I'm not paying for a pressure pump

Here's hoping the blokes at the rural store can drill holes without splitting my barrels!