Tap/valve fitting for water container

You do have access to the inside. Quarter fill it. Take a thread. Tie one end to a small sponge or something. Drill hole. Use end of thread which has been pushed through hole by flowing water to pull string through. Tie fitting onto middle of string (NOT end - you want to be able to retry) so that you can pull it through the hole with the string.

============================ A 'home brew' barrel tap has a nut and thread fixing on the inside. Weld a cheap spanner to a length of steel rod to a suitable length to reach for tightening the nut.

Cic.

============================ A 'home brew' barrel tap has a nut and thread fixing on the inside. Weld a cheap spanner to a length of steel rod to a suitable length to reach for tightening the nut.

Cic.

SWMBO also came up with a string-based approach, but using gravity instead of flowing water. I have no doubt that this is the way to go. Thanks muchly.

I dunno, the steel rod would be 7 foot long. It'd be pretty fiddly to maneuver I think.

How long a thread - would a few inches do?

And now water will be pouring out the hole.

How did the end of the thread get inside the tank - you didn't say that?

String? STRING? You never mentioned string. Now my feet are getting wet, and the tank's nearly empty.

Clearer instructions next time please Ian.

Thanks

Mungo :-)

================== Yes, it could be difficult. It depends on how desperate you are.

Would it be possible to pressurise the tank slightly and have water exiting from near the top through a pipe?

Cic.

Can you climb in? With a helper on the outside it ought to be easy enough!

Sadly not, the top (and only) opening is 8" in diameter.

I think it would be possible, but I'd rather not go to the additional complexity unless absolutely necessary. Another option is to just pump the water out, but again, I'd rather avoid if possible.

The message from Grunff contains these words:

What you need's a small boy.

Maybe an Essex Flange?

Mike

!!

It's so obvious, I completely missed it! That should work just great - thanks.

I am thick: how will an Essex Flange help?

What about a previous suggestion: drill a hole then tap it with a screw thread ready to take (say) a three-quarters thread?

Mungo

Well, I've never used one, but they can be fitted to a tank completely from the outside - not sure exactly how, but I've seen them in place on h/w cylinders.

(scroll down near the bottom)

I think the PE is too soft for a cut thread - it would leak sooner or later.

Because it can be fitted from the outside without needing access to the inside of the tank. The nut is passed in through the (non-circular) hole - and hopefully not dropped inside!

You'd still need a bit of external pipework with a ball/lever valve or something in it, but you could fix that to the flange's normal connection points.

The wall thickness is only 3mm - which is not enough to make a secure fixing.

I'm still mystified by the earlier suggestion of using a piece of string or thread. Is this supposed to deliver a nut to the right place inside, or what? If that's what it's intended to do, how do you actually get the nut onto the back of the tap, and do it up?

In a previous thread I described my plans to make one of these ( a couple of weeks ago). Now THAT is true DIY! :-)

The deed has been done: my HW cylinder had a one inch threaded blank on the side of it and I bought a fitting to match this to a 22mm pipe.

My old man has a lathe, so he removed the stop rim inside the fitting to allow the 22mm pipe to fully enter the HW cylinder. One neat bend in the

Hopefully no future posts to the contrary...

Mungo :-)

====================== I thought that an 'Essex flange' is designed to draw water from the top of a cylinder. If that is the case then it won't be much use for your purpose as the water level will frequently fall below the take-off point in your rain water tank.

Perhaps my understanding of how the Essex flange works is wrong. Can somebody describe how they work?

Cic.

The message from "Roger Mills" contains these words:

I'd lash a spanner to a stick and hot-melt the nut to the spanner. Then reach inside and swear a bit till it works. Did much the same trying to get the seatbelt nuts into the bodywork of an Espace to fit the middle row three point belts that Renault in their wisdom deleted from that model.