Linking water butts together..

[Lee Nowell]

Hi All,

Just wanted to get your thoughts on this one...

I am looking to install 3 water butts on a down pipe to capture as much rain as possible. Question is, how best to connect them??

My initial thought was to...

1. Install a rain water diverter and feed the water into the first butt
2. cut a hole a 3rd of the way up the first butt and connect this to the bottom (ie where the tap usually goes) of butt 2. Ensuring the pipe is horizontal. (i.e. butt 2 is higher than butt 1)

3.connect butt 3 to butt 2 again at the bottom (i.e. butt 2 and 3 are at the same height)

In ASCII art if it makes it any clearer!!......

1 2 3 [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]------[ ]-----[ ] [ ] ------ ------ -------

My thought process was that this should leave a good depth in butt 1 to fit a pump to pump the water to the garden.

Is this the best way to do it?

Thanks in advance for your help

Lee.

[Jeff Gaines]

Very pretty :-)

How much water do you expect butts 2 & 3 to retain???

[Jonathan]

You will store more water if they are level and joined as low as possible.

Jonathan

[Phil L]

doing it that way will leave butt one only half filled, and the other two only a thrird filled or less, I thought the object was to collect as much as possible?

Why not just do it like I've drawn in this diagram:

butt fills to the top, then overflows into the next, simples.

[Toby]

Assuming tank 1 is open to the air at the top, and does not have a float valve to shut off the water on the input from tank 2, then tanks 2 and 3 will not get any fuller than the top of tank 1 (so 2/3 full before tank 1 overflows, in your diagram, if it is to scale!).

If you get an external pump, then you can just join all three tanks at the bottom make sure they are all at the same height, and take the water from any of them.

If you have to use a submersible pump, then if you can get a slightly taller tank1, and situate it so the top of it is at the same level as 2 and 3, that would be ideal.

Toby...

[Toby]

The lower butt will fill to the top, the 2nd and 3rd will only remain 2/3 full

If he has a pump in one of them, it will only be able to empty the one it is in.

Toby...

[Phil L]

He'll have to use a watering can then :-p

[chris French]

Yeah, but presumably he wants to have a bit of a reservoir in no. 1 for the pump. a taller butt there maybe.

I don't bother joining up buts together with proper pies anymore. I just connect them with a siphon. Basically a bit of hose pipe dangled into each butt, down to the bottom . Once primed, all the butt will hold water at the same level. (just like connecting them at the bottom)

If you want to move the butts then just put the hosepipe back after wards. The butts can be any distance apart, so easy way to move water from once place to another in the garden.

[Jules Richardson]

That means you need a tap on each butt, and you need to keep drawing water from each butt in turn to avoid water sitting around too long in any given one, surely? Having them connected at the base would avoid both those issues (but the OP just needs to have all three butts on the same level)

cheers

Jules

[Clive George]

Another traditional solution is to use a siphon tube between each one. The advantage of this is that there's no joints to leak, you just run a length of hose. The downside is you have to prime it (not too hard) and your siphon hose has to be below the tap outlet so it doesn't run dry, or you'll have to prime it again.

[Lee Nowell]

Thanks all for your suggestions... As many have said, I guess the best option is to join them all at the bottom. I was trying to get out of the scenario of having to have all 3 go to the minimum level for the submersible pump before being able to use it. I guess there isn't an easy answer...... Thinking about it further, I think I will fit valves on the connections so at least I can restrict to 1 or 2 butts in dry weather...

[Dave Liquorice]

Correct and in the interests of not letting the water stagnate there might be some sense in taking the water from Butt 3 rather than Butt

1. Also make sure the butts are opaque and have well fitting opaque lids otherwise they will grow some lovely algae. though I guess for garden watering that isn't much of problem but may increase a stagnation problem.

[Toby]

In my collection I have two very tall 1500l butts joined together at the bottom, with the pump in one of them, they then overflow to two 1000l IBC tanks, all on the same level, but the IBC's are about 1/2 the height. The IBC's overflow into the drain.

I have joined the IBC's to the btootm of the tall ones, but put a one way swinging check valve so water can only flow out of them, back into the tall ones, so the tall ones will always fill first, then overflow into the shorter ones. Once the water level is down to the height of the water in the IBC's the water will flow back from them and will be pumped out.

You could always arrange the pump so it trickles some water over the top of the pump when it is running too - I was going to try and fit some kind of bucket over the pump, full of water, so it always remains full of water, but I haven' got a round tuit yet.

I expect if I have a bucket up-side-down, with a small pipe connected to the bottom, with a one way valve on it so any air in the bucket will exit this valve, but won't then get drawn back in when the water level rises, will work... The rim of the bucket would need to be high enough to allow the cable and output pipe to exit, so about 30mm off the bottom of the tank would probably be enough, then have a float switch that shuts the pump off at 35mm depth should keep it all submersed.

Or just get an external pump!

Toby...

[brass monkey]

Bung a washing machine pump below the pipe you join the butts with.

[David WE Roberts]

I think I see what you are trying to do - sacrifice 1/3 of the two butts to have a single butt that fills up 1/3 full before anything else fills.

I'm not sure if this has already been mentioned, but : have all 3 butts at the same level link butts 2&3 at the bottom link butt 1 at the top to butt 2 then all you need is a pipe at the bottom between butts 2 & 1 with a one way valve (from 2 to 1)

As long as the valve works O.K. then butt 1 will fill up to the top before any water goes into butt 2 - this gives you your initial water supply. After that, if the level in butt 1 falls below that in butts 2&3 then water flows into butt 1 through the bottom pipe and one way valve. This also allows you to empty all 3 butts from butt 1.

HTH

Dave R

[Gareth]

Perhaps you could do what you want if butt one (the one with the pump) was deeper than the other two so that the tops of all three would be level whilst still allowing the bottom of the butt with the pump to be lower, like this:

1 2 3 [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]------[ ]-----[ ] [ pump ] ------ ------ -------

I don't know how easy it would be to find butts of the required depths though.