AKA: Murpy's Revenge
Back in early 2013, I got me an idea of how I could harvest rainwater directly from the downpipe into a bathtub I was using to grow water plants in, (if you want to know more about the productive water garden click here). I built and installed it and whadda yer know? It worked! The final pic from that article is reproduced below, and after the article was written I did tweak it a bit. Rather than having the hose stick straight out I inserted a corner piece and screwed the hose to the downpipe with a couple of conduit half saddles to secure it. I then ran the hose long the back wall of the house and under the wood chip and bark to conceal it, just poking the end out over the bathtub. I checked and it worked!
As far as I was aware it continued to work from then on, I did some more work in that area and installed the constructed wetland and a few other things but there it was, another successful project!
The years roll on and in the 2020/2021 summer we got some pretty heavy downpours, to the point where I decided to go out the back and check whether I need to turn the bit that catches the water on its side to let water go down the drain rather than divert it. Well, I get out there and water is spraying EVERYWHERE, from the joins in the down pipe, from the diverter, from everything. I decided at this point that I DID need to turn the diverter around, which I proceeded to do, while getting soaked to the skin.
And……. It made no difference! I decided that now was the time to remove the diverter completely and just let the water go straight down the downpipe. As usual. This proved to be more easily said than done, but when I finally got it out I found the whole thing to be choked with leaves and debris such that it was totally blocked. With the diverter and leaves and crap removed the rain just went straight down the pipe, disaster averted!
Just this weekend I knew we were going to be in for some rain soon, so I finally got around to re-installing it and setting it up so we could harvest some rain into the water garden. When it started to rain, I headed out excitedly to check the situation and see how much water was coming out of the hose. After much debate and inspection I decided – none, the hose must be blocked!
To clear the blockage I tried blowing into both sides of the hose, to very little effect, with the exception of getting soaked to the skin again. After some rumination I made up a fitting to allow me to use water pressure from the house supply to clear the line. I set it up and turned on the tap, to be rewarded by the sound of gushing water, but it was not coming out of the end of the hose that I wanted! I looked down to where the hose curved around at the bottom of the downpipe and water was gushing out of a considerable hole it the hose. When I inspected it there were lots of cracks, it was old, weathered and in really poor nick so it needed to be replaced.
At least now I knew what was required, and it would be a simple matter to pull the hose out from behind the tanks and dispose of it. Except, it wasn’t! I pulled on it but it would not move. I had not secured it to anything so it should pull right out *sigh*. Well it turns out that when I installed the (very heavy) constructed wetland, one of the supports was sitting right over the top of the hose.
That was it! I cut the hose either side of the wetland support, ran the replacement hose from the diverter to the water garden (while still getting soaked) and then set the diverter up to collect the water. And…… it worked!
I guess the moral of the story is something about being persistent, but I think there is a point to be made about stupidity also, and not mounting heavy constructions over the top of water supply hoses!
