We were lucky with another sunny morning, but less people were able to attend, so those that were there constructed a system to collect water into two barrels on Plot 11, where there is no shed or other building to collect rainwater from. The two taller posts and the piece of guttering were new, but everything else was material collected on site and re-purposed.

We made sure that the length of guttering was completely level and, when we tested the system by pouring a watering can over the top of the plastic roofing sheet, the water poured equally into both barrels. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly the barrels fill up as this isn’t a huge surface area, but there is the option for other barrels to be daisy-chained off of each of these in order to collect as much as possible.

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We also made an alteration to the tarpaulin system we made on Plot 12 at the last working party. We’d noticed that, in windy weather, the tarpaulin was not staying stretched taut, and so the water wasn’t really efficiently channeled down into the barrel. We found some wooden slats, which we used to make a support for the tarpaulin – we’ll keep an eye on this and see how it affects rainwater collection.