I have 2 or 3 nice long gutters which run from the back of the bungalow to the front and then into the drainpipes.
I'd like to collect the rain water for watering the back and topping up the small ponds.
I can't see how to do it and still have the "overflow" going into the drainpipe. Is there an easy low cost way?
Zero fall all round? They would be prone to silting up, but at least it's a bungalow.
Put a dam somewhere along the gutter. Experiment with the position and height.
Bill
If you don't want the water butt at the front, you need to reverse the fall, then run the overflow back to the front. Unless you are naughty and put it down the sewer?
If you could use a watertight butt & downpipe, a downpipe from the gutter is all you'd need.
NT
He said "run from the back to the front" - I took that to mean there's a fall towards the front.
Anyway: One solution is to put a diverter in the downpipe at the front at just below the top of the water butt height. Then run a pipe from there to the butt. The pipe should have a fall towards the butt, but when the butt is more or less full, the water should back up in the pipe to the level of the diverter - because that's how they work.
In reality, you'd probably want an inch+ dia pipe or so and you could arrange for it to joint into the bottom of the butt with a watertight boss (look in places that sell large aquarium and pond parts)
That leaves a good few options with how to run the pipe. Pipe could even be a large bore hose, but make sure it will not mind becoming frozen in winter.
The "?" wasn't so much to indicate a question, it was more to indicate the validity of my answer was questionable (!)
I don't get it. Why a watertight butt + downpipe and why would any water go from the gutter into this?
Now this sounds interesting. So I put a new downpipe into the collector tank at the high end and when this is full the gutter should overflow the dam and go its normal route? That simple?
Air will get out OK, but when the butt and downpipe are full up to the level of the dam, the water will have to flow forward to the normal drain. You need the dam to be close to the front of the house, and the slope to be *very* small, otherwise the butt never fills (the dam overflows before water reaches the back).
OK. You don't have the ability to solve it then.
:-) My experience is that diverter valves need more maintenance than they get. Usually an accumulation of moss/leaves and other detritus plug the route to the butt unnoticed.
I think the diverter is superfluous as you could directly fill the butt and have an overflow to drain/soakaway.
That's one advantage to what I sugested, no diverter. And the gutter already there is the overflow. I don't see how it could get any simpler - with the one exception that the system would need to be watertight.
NT
Maybe, despite your best intentions, you have failed to explain what you meant in a way that I can understand it.
Where is the watertight butt and downpipe placed?
where a normal downpipe would go. It fills up and then overflows into the gutter from whence it came. So the water instead of filling the butt, carries on to the next downpipe
At the back of the house on the corner. Water going from there to the front falls into the butt instead, until it's full, whereupon it then ignores the butt and flows to the front as usual.
I'd also put some inflated plastic bags in the butt to cope with freezing, and probably a 1/2" hose in the downpipe sealed at the ends again to cope with freeze expansion.
NT
Didn't the OP say that the gutters, as currently installed drain towards the front? How will your watertight installation at the back ever fill?
Chris
Having reread the OP I see the exact requirements are not made clear.
NT
I noticed this rather creative guttering while walking past it the other day.
I assume he's hidden the pipes in the troughs, rather than fed the rain into them!
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