Sunday, January 2, 2011

Gathering water

At my place for some reason I was lucky enough to have one of the downpipes end before it contacted with the ground. This allowed me to cut the top of a platic container of drink and invert it, creating a syphone. Making holes in the plastic I added large size paper clips that I'd stretched out, through the holes and then bent them over to hook onto the bracket that held the pipe to the wall.

Then from the syphon I made a make shift pipe from plastic milk bottles, cutting out the platic, rolling it into a pipe and duct taping it with a cheap roll of duct tape. The pipe aims into a 45 litre platic container, one of those ones you can buy to store stuff in. Here, the stuff is water. I had stuff in it before, but didn't need to now, so it switched roles.

All my other downpipes are flush with the ground though, which makes this process not work out as it's gravity fed. If you own the house you could make a small incision at a higher level and insert a pipe - it wont gather all the water, but it'll get some. Even if you don't own the house, it might be possible to make a descrete incision on the side more toward the house and hidden away.