Many people are interested in our extensive rainwater harvesting system. The water is collected in normal sized rain water butts but any extra is routed to 7 large tanks. One is half buried in the hot garden and takes water from the south side of the roof to provide automatic watering and water feature top up in the hot garden. The water from the other roofs meets at a manhole just in front of the garage and it is pumped from there to six large tanks (350 and 440 gallon) behind the garage. From there it can be pumped to watering points by the greenhouses and the vegetable garden. Some is used to automatically water plants around the house and the green houses.
When there is a lot of rain, water can be moved under gravity to the reservoir sited under the Summer House. This has about 2000 gallons capacity and is used to top up the wild pond and water can be returned to the main system when demand is higher than rainfall. Overall we can store more than 5000 gallons of rainwater, This sounds a lot but in practice it can be used rapidly when feeding 2 large ponds a water feature and a lot of thirsty plants.
