Harvesting water – saving the salad – tips & tricks

The head gardener (my wife) was going on about rainwater although our well water (when the pump runs) is second to none. Rainwater has ambient temperature…….

rain water tankNow one of the sons of our neighbour happens to work for a swimming pool company. These companies get their chemicals in nice big 1m3 (1000 liter) plastic tanks. So if you need one of these check with local pool companies as they tend to sell them – cleaned.

So a couple of days ago heavy rain started to be forecast. As I’m always happy to have some distractions from the work I should do – like laying tiles or rendering the facade – we started this project.

The head gardener dug out and build a simple foundation using the ubiquitous “blockos” and bless her got it level. The tank itself sits on a pallet and with the help of Lorenzo (neighbors son) we lugged the tank to its final resting place.

pipe workpipe work IISome fancy pipe work with offcuts of 40mm pipes held together with gaffa tape bend to will and garnished with a cutout at the gutter outlet and we had our rainwater harvesting machine. It’s from a combined 50m2 roof space nearby.

salad savedThe weather forecast was true and within a day we started collecting water – 400l so far – So salad saved.

Now when it rains we bet with each other – 50l rain / 200l rainy night / 100l deluge…… and so on.

Yes, and before the tank is full I’ll drill the yellow “tapa” and glue in a normal hose pipe connector….  Job for another distraction.

 

Expat

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