[Potterer]

Hi my current allotment site doesn’t allow greenhouses or sheds. We do have water troughs but I would like to be able to collect water too. Have there been any ideas here about heath Robinson ways to build water collectors? My next door allotment neighbour has tried an upturned umbrella contraption but that hasn’t worked well.

Have tried to search this site but haven’t found anything....

[Growster...]

Good post, Potterer.

When we had that problem, my Patch neighbour and I just took a long piece of corrugated iron, and 'bridged' between our water butts, using a piece of guttering to direct the rainwater into the butts.

You'd be surprised at how much water you can harvest this way! And also, if you're not allowed sheds, you can use the sheet as a sort of shelter for tools etc!

It seems a bit unfair, not allowing any sort of safe storage and water conservation, but if they're the 'rules', then you have to improvise I suppose!

Hope it works!

[Potterer]

Thanks Growster. Sounds good but finding it hard to see what you mean about how it works....Do you attach guttering to edges of the corrugated iron? Any chance of a photo please?

[Growster...]

No pics available, Potterer, but the way to do it is to arrange a piece of old guttering along the bottom of the sloping edge on the corrugated iron, and allow the water to drain into the butt.

If you have access to other fittings, like stop ends, or a proper down-pipe outflow, then even better, but just make sure that the water landing on the iron tips towards the bottom, and that the gutter has a slope into the butt.

It may need a 'Heath Robinson' set up but that's not really a problem - especially on an allotment, where all sorts of inventions usually work well!

[Misterkitz]

On our allotment, we are also bereft of any guttering or standpipe, so we made our own Heath Robinson thing. We positioned it in an exposed area so it will catch as much rainwater as possible!
(all the parts were sourced from Freecycle etc)...

[Potterer]

Misterkitz, sorry have only just seen this. How well does your apparatus work please? Looks great!

[JayG]

Don't know if or when Misterkitz will be visiting to answer your question, but I can give you a way of estimating how much water a given area of catchment will deliver for each inch of rain:

Divide the catchment area in square feet by 12, then multiply that by 6.23.

For example: if the maximum dimensions of the 'umbrella' are 6' x 4', for each inch of rain that falls you will get:

6 X 4 = 24 sq feet, divided by 12 = 2

2 X 6.23 = 12.46 gallons

Although 'every little helps', it's clearly important to have as large a container as possible to store the rain falling outside the growing season, as well as a large 'collection device' too of course.