Rainwater Harvesting using IBC Tanks and Water Butts

As well as our solar panels we have also developed a fairly extensive rainwater harvesting system that allows rainwater to be captured from various roofs and stored around the garden near to where it is needed.



Rainwater Harvesting using IBC Tanks and Water Butts

Although the setup allows us to save water as we are now on a water meter and to avoid the impact of hosepipe bans for gardening the primary reason for setting the rainwater harvesting system up was to have water available where it was needed so that watering cans could easily be filled instead of using hosepipes.

With 4 water butts holding 200 litres, 2 recycled juice barrels containing 200 litres and an IBC tank that contains 1000 litres of water we have a total rainwater storage capacity of 2200 litres. Despite this apparently large volume we can easily run out of rainwater after a few dry weeks.



IBC water storage tank

2012 was not a dry year so the tanks were at least half full for much of the summer but 2013 is proving to be much drier and with no significant rain for the last 8 weeks the tanks are currently virtually empty. We do have a submersible water pump that allows us to move water around the garden which can be powered using the electricity from our solar panels but with most of the tanks empty this is little use at present.