I wish to place a rain butt the other side of a door to the gutter down pipe. This means the feed will need to be higher than the butt to get over the door. If I install the rain diverter higher than the top of the door, connect a hose from this, over the door to the rain butt feeding it through a float valve would this work? Once the float rose and shut the valve the pipe would fill with water, then backup operating the rain diverter.
Would this work, or has anyone a better solution? TIA
I'm presuming the problem is that the rain butt is vented to the atmosphere at the top? Simply replacing this style of "cistern" with a sealed "tank" would solve your problems?
Or perhaps do as I did: sat the water butt on a high wooden platform to make use of the wasted upper space and to give me lots of flow pressure. If anyone wants the dreaded photos, drop me an email!
Mungo :-)
connect
Rain supply will contain grit and muck, ballvalve needs clean water otherwise it fails to close sometimes.
You could heath robinson it with a float operated guttering diverter:
: (___________)
Can you not take the feed from the diverter down via hose under the door step and then bottom feed into the bottom of the barrel ? If you get the diverter level right, your barrel will not overfill. No valves etc. necessary. You could alternatively have the diverter higher and fit the barrel with an overflow that returns via a separate hose under the step to your drain.
I have both systems that work satisfactorily.
Pete
through a
diverter.
clever!
NT
We did that too - but so that we could put a watering can under the tap to fill it. It was a bonus that we could run a hose down the garden from it.
Another solution is to have another one - or more - butts round the gaden, all connected. That way the level in each is equalised.
The water we get from the roof is so clean I'd be prepared to drink it raw. If there are any solid deposits they must fall to the bottom of the butt because we never see any - nor do we from the water we collect in another butt from the greenhouse roof.
Mary
Mine looks clean too. However, I wouldn't drink it as I suspect the salmonella (and doubtless other things) will have washed out of the bird shit into the water.
Is salmonella in bird shit, necessarily?
I pick up our hens' droppings to throw them on the garden (they do it a lot on the paths, idle things). by the time I get back in the house I suspect I'll have forgotten about washing my hands ...
Look, if I were thirsty I'd drink anything. I've drunk water from a burn in the Lowlands and nasty brackish water from the fens. Sea water is something I've had lots of mouthfuls of but it's not good to drink. I must have also swallowed pints if not gallons of swimming pool water and we all know what goes into that. And it wasn't always loadedwith anti whatevers.
I really believe you can be too fussy. I once visited a friend who washed grapefruit before peeling and eating it ...
Mary
I believe it's very common. It's very easily spread between birds, and it's harmless (to them).
There's unlikely to be enough on your hands to cause you a problem directly via ingestion, even if you immediately eat a sandwitch without washing your hands first. Chances are you are regularly eating small amounts of salmonella bacteria regularly without any problem. However, if you handled any food which then sat around such that the salmonella could multiply on it before you got round to eating it, then you could be in real trouble.
Again, low levels won't do you any harm and I doubt it can multiply in clean water. Your water butt might get filled in one rain storm which washes the last 2 week's bird shit off the roof. If you drunk a lot of the water, you might go over the harmless dose (which would seem to be around 1 million bacteria for salmonella).
Humans don't normally harbour salmonella AFAIK. There are other nasties though.
Yes, it's actually important to expose your immune system bacteria and viruses to keep it working. I suspect the obsession with cleanlyness which some people have nowadays is responsible for the increase in a number of diseases in recent years, particularly alergies. I just saw a scare tactic advert for Detol (IIRC) on the telly saying "did you know your child's high chair has a thousand times[1] more bacteria than the floor?". So what?
[1] actually I don't remember what the claimed figure was.
I'm sure I am. I'm sure we all are.
Well, quite. I'm well aware of how salmonella spreads! In fact it's not all that easy to get even a sub-lethal dose.
But the question was about drinking water from the butt :-) There's no problem from salmonella even if does have bird shit in it.
Quite.
It doesn't take a storm, I'm always surprised at how quickly it does get filled.
There's no way I could drink a buttfull. What's more, the salmonella has to be in the droppings - and capable of withstanding (in your scenario) two weeks of being dried and blown about (into the air which we breathe, incidentally).
I think that the poster who mentioned bird shit and salmonella might have been confusing it with e-coli. I'm not worried about that either by the way.
I know that. I didn't mention salmonella.
I understand your point though. And how did they know?
Mary
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