[savbo]

I'm setting up a length of scrounged 110mm soil waste pipe as a sort of water butt, but an off-the-shelf stopper plug for the bottom of it is £4. Anyone any clever ideas for closing the end of the pipe for little or no cost?

(the 'butt' will go under one downpipe of the greenhouse - on the sunny side so I don't want a big proper water butt or barrel creating shade - connected by a siphon hose to the real water butt on the other downpipe...)

sav

[arugula]

connected by a siphon hose to the real water butt

Can you not just channel the downpipe straight to the real waterbutt? It sounds like a lot of faffing about and by the time you've made something fit the end of the 110 mm pipe I can envisage you having spent as much as or more than the £4 cost of the genuine end cap on silicone or jubilee clips to secure it in place and make it watertight. I'd bite the bullet and buy the £4 end cap.

[savbo]

fair point! And I am going to the supplier for some MDPE anyway!

sometimes frugality gets a bit obsessive doesn't it?

sav

[arugula]

It can do. I reckon 4 quid for a water storage container isn't too bad. Out of interest, what sort of capacity do you think it has?

[savbo]

hmmmm let's say internal width is 10cm, so radius is 5cm, pi r 2 gives you 78sq cm. if I have it to height of other water butt that's about 150cm, giving just under 12l?

[arugula]

Up to you then (obviously ), channel it direct and drop that idea or get yourself an extra 12 litres storage for £4.

[jrko]

Channel it to the other one.  Might just be a case of re doing a gutter?

[savbo]

Channelling might be tricky. The greenhouse slopes towards the door (deliberatly, as I wanted to have water butts by the door) so I can't just put a gutter across from the side in question to the water butt on the other... not without ducking every time I go in!

I could connect the downpipe (which is about 40mm) to a U of similar guage pipe running under the step and into the water butt...but by the time I've done that I thought that the SuperSlim butt would be as cheap and would  be easier to clean out if crud gets in.

sav

[jrko]

butt (haha  ) 12l is like having a bucket full of water

If I understand your setup right, are we dealing with half your GH roof's runoff? 

[JayG]

I could connect the downpipe (which is about 40mm) to a U of similar guage pipe running under the step and into the water butt

Surely that's the best solution (with or without an additional main butt) - 12L of water is such a small amount it would be better to pipe it to the butt anyway, and if you're going do that the soil pipe would then serve no useful purpose? 

[savbo]

Sorry for not being clear - as I tried to explain in original post, this 12l will just be a collector to siphon into the main 210l butt (which is connected by siphons to 2 other butts, one inside the greenhouse!).

Sav The Imprecise

[JayG]

I don't think it was unclear, I just don't understand the advantage of providing an extra 12L of storage when you have 100's of litres of capacity anyway, and could just pipe it directly into the bottom of the butts from the guttering (provided the guttering is higher than the top of the butts, which it presumably is.)

[jrko]

what JayG says