No water!

[kathleen]

Ha ha, you're dead right, I'm on the (very dry) east coast of NZ . Good point, you don't want to make your garden a bog!! I liked the idea of using it to flush the loo, a cunning use of mucky water.

[Graye]

For some reason water seems to be incredibly expensive in France. This weekend I gave the cars their annual wash and scrub out and thought I would economise on the water I used by throwing buckets of water from our water butts over them to rinse them.

First of all nothing at all came out. Then, after a splutter, a very dead mouse appeared in the bucket along with a huge pile of decayed leaves, a lot of mossy bits and then some very smelly and grubby green water. The butt is sealed so it must be the contents of the gutters. I think I will have to stick to using it just for watering after all. And there was me thinking it would be nice for hair-washing etc...

[MuddyWitch]

Graye,

Could you not give your gutters a really good scrub, then put gutter guards on? Not sure how you'd mouse-proof these though, make 'em out of galvanised chichen wire? Mind it's easy for me to talk, I live in a bungalow so my gutters are easy to reach It seems a shame to miss out on free water, though.

MW

[Millymollymandy]

We have home made gutter guards/wire mesh to stop leaves getting in. You do have lids on your water butts don't you?

What gets me is how I come across the occasional diving beetle in the IBCs - now how the hell do they get there???? I put them in the pond when I find them.

[kathleen]

Mesh gutter guards should keep anything mysterious out of the water - we have to be super careful as it's our drinking supply - my lovely husband gets up on the roof every few weeks with a scrubbing brush and gives all the guttering a good scrub. Lucky too that we live on an organic/biodynamic property so there's no nasty spray landing on our roof! Rainwater is so lovely to wash your hair in too by the way