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Petworth Balcony Garden

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Commenced:	01/06/2016
Submitted:	16/05/2017
Last updated:	16/05/2017
Location:	Reading, GB
Climate zone:	Cool Temperate

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Petworth Balcony Garden

Reading, GB

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Water Harvesting and Storage

Project: Petworth Balcony Garden

Posted by David Addis over 7 years ago

The developing system for catching and storing water on my Ground floor balcony. Ideas welcome!

Being on the ground floor and directly below another balcony it's rare except with a mixture of heavy downpour and strong winds that rainwater falls onto my containers. When we first moved in and started growing, especially during the summer, we were using tap water and making repeated journeys from the kitchen, though our front room and onto the balcony. It felt wasteful of both water, time and energy.

I have tried with leaving buckets/containers outside of my plot on the communal garden in front, however I am conscious of other tenants feeling that I am encroaching on communal space and the bucket is a bit of an eyesore in amongst the other plants.

Currently the newest system I have involves a drainpipe to catch rainwater (not connected to a roof), an innertube moving the water to a system of larger recycled water jugs, each of which connected by inner tubes which can be used as a hose. The first container is roughly a metre of the ground so produces enough pressure when full to water smaller plant growing containers. I'll add a photo and diagram at some point as its easier to show than describe.

While I have solved the storage problem, the drainpipe has too small an area to catch sufficient rainwater. So...we are currently catching and storing the water from our shower. Our shower takes a minute or two to warm up to a suitable temperature so we stand in the buff and watch a 3 or 4 litres of perfectly good (but very cold) water rush down the plug hole. While I could be brave and hop straight in, I have opted with having a bucket in the shower to catch this, and then transporting outside to the water storage.

At the moment, this is working but needs some fine tuning with pouring the bucket into the water storage. But thats for another day.

Future Possible Water Developments (Id be keen for people to share their ideas on my future tasks)

Drip Irrigation System (Tricky with many small containers that I move location to improve display and get better conditions)

Water runoff from containers

Container from shower to outside

Small pond

Increasing rainwater catching

A rain chain from the above balconies overflow

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