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I have two barrels on my allotment that I inherited from the previous tennant - both full of water at the moment. With the threat of hosepipe bans and water shortages should I think of some more measures to collect rainwater?

At the risk of sounding daft (with rain forecast for the next two days,for us anyway) I think that would be a very good idea. We hae decided to put water butts at every downpipe and shed roof ( that stands at four at present) as we are worried about the hosepipe ban,especially with it being so early in the year and sods law dictates that we will have the hottest summer for decades! I imagine that your allotment is larger than our veg plot and tunnel combined and therefore will need more water. We found last year that just by c0ollecting the rainwater that fell into the various buckets,bowls ect that we had lying about in the garden,we soon managed to fill a large butt without it being connected to anything else. That would be a good idea if you are short of shed roofs to harvest water from,just make sure you weigh them down with a stone or youll be collecting them from other people plots!

good idea, simplicity itself, here was me thing of erecting some free standing guttering or something. No shed to catch rain off so yes, buckets for me.

I'm going to half inch a huge topless plastic drum off a bit of local waste ground. I can stand it up on bricks or something to dribble out through some of that leaky pipe - I can fill it from catchwater and only top up from the hose when needed. Mesh on the top, I suppose!

Be careful that know what was in it first, mate! Some chemical residues can be quite persistent - and nasty!

Nev

That's a thought... it's empty now and looks clean. I'll have another look at it...

When in Turkey, where water is at a premium - we regularly experience complete loss of water in the middle of the summer - we regularly make sure that we have 10 or even 20 litre water bottles filled for loo flushing etc. The bottles from water coolers etc are good because they have small necks and therefore guard against evaporation. Sue

You can get large containers, mostly used by agriculture or industry. They're in strong plastic and built in a kind of metal structure. You can store about 1.000 liters of water in there and at the bottom there is a tap. I saw some of those on Ebay and they're not really that expensive. (I'm looking to find a picture but haven't found one). I'm volunteer with the belgian Civil Protection and over there we have 'Startanks', large storage tanks in strong plastic supported by a metal frame. It can hold a few thousand liters of water and can easily be mounted or dismounted. I don't know if civilians can buy these kind of tanks, but it's worth looking for them. I'm on duty saturday and will try to find out more about these tanks.

Those would be SO cool 8)

Those are the ones that we have. I think we paid about €90 new for them and about €60 for the used ones - only you have to clean them out pretty well as they are usually used for storing diesel for tractors etc. Still thinking of getting some more - after last summer's drought I want all the water I can get hold of, now, whilst it's raining!

WHat is the risk of the water going stagnant if you store too much of it?

I've ever thought about that - but then when we need the water in summer a water butt of 300 litres lasts only a few days. So not much chance of going stagnant. I think as long as they have lids on they should stay good for a long time as isn't it the sunshine on the water that makes it go green? It's only for garden use though, I wouldn't use this water for animals.

Well this is probably the only advantage of living this far North - we never have to worry about a shortage of water for our gardens.

In an old book I've got,it suggests floating a thin film of oil on the top of the water if you have no lid ,to stop gnats from laying eggs in it.I suppose it would keep any algae from growing too.

As far as I am aware, only town water goes stagnant. The kero thing works a treat for gnats and mozzies but you need to keep the water in the dark to defeat algae!

Nev