More Than Living

Collecting rain in water butts

They say make hay while the sun shines, but there hasn’t been much of it about this summer. Last winter’s wet­test five months since 1914 had already guar­an­teed that there wouldn’t be a repeat of last summer’s hosepipe ban. After two peri­ods of severe flood­ing caus­ing bil­lions of pounds of damage, it’s now dis­tant, almost sur­real memory.

Fig­ures from the Met Office show that by 22 July, the three months from May to July were already the wet­test in Eng­land and Wales since records began in 1766. While a grim har­vest update from the National Farm­ers’ Union con­firms that it’s unlikely to be a bumper year for hay, the pro­longed above-​​average rain­fall means that most of the country’s reser­voirs are at least above their normal level.

This BBC News art­icle points out the poten­tial role of rain­wa­ter stor­age in redu­cing ground­wa­ter flood­ing, and in eking out the most from the rain that falls. The simplest domestic sys­tems can store enough of the water gathered by your home’s gut­ter­ing for car wash­ing and water­ing the garden. Larger, more soph­ist­ic­ated sys­tems can col­lect water from drive­ways and other paved areas, and can even supply rain­wa­ter for flush­ing toi­lets or doing the washing.

Although in some drier parts of the world you can get a grant to install rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing, we couldn’t find one avail­able in the UK. We asked DEFRA, who told us: “There are no grants for house­hold­ers, but busi­nesses can get enhanced cap­ital allow­ances for water effi­cient technology.”

The Envir­on­ment Agency says that some rivers and reser­voirs are still only at their aver­age level or lower, but the Met Office is fore­cast­ing above-​​average rain for the next couple of weeks. Anyone wor­ried about fur­ther severe weather this summer can sub­scribe to their useful news feed.

IMAGE

by Flickr user gluemoon

Sim­ilar Posts:

• Draft Flood and Water Man­age­ment Bill pub­lished­De­fra con­sulta­tion launched
• Flood funds going unclaimed
• If it’s impossible to waste water, why do we need more reservoirs?
• How does rain make you feel?
• How to create an office garden

Ori­gin­ally posted 2007-​​07-​​27 13:49:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Posted in Uncategorized | View Comments