2022 January

     Over a year since the stainless steel tank was delivered (November 2020), we finally got around to putting up the downpipes. The gutters on our house run along each side, a 10 metre length on the north side and a 10 metre length on the south side. The photo below shows the south side. On the left you can see the separate verandah roof gutter which has its own downpipe into a 100 litre plastic tank.

      This meant that the downpipes had to come down from each side separately and then join in the middle, and then go across the gap to go into the tank. This was quite tricky because you can't just put both sides into a central pipe at once - there is no plumbing part to suit this situation. I can only guess that's because the two flows of water will hit each other and slow down too much. This meant that one side had to come down at a different angle to the other side, but there is only so much wiggle room you can do when fitting one pipe to another pipe. The solution Josh came up with was to install a bit of a wiggle which you can almost see coming down from the gutter on the left hand side.

          The distance from the house to the tank was a bit too far for the downpipe to support itself without sagging, so Josh constructed a support pole to keep it staying upright and stable. First he made a metal box for the base, ready to fill with concrete.

Then he filled it with a concrete mix and attached some leftover metal framing to be the support pole.

          Below you can see the finished set-up.  We also installed a first flush diverter to try and keep the water going into the tank a bit more clean.

          The first flush diverter is the grey pipe which comes straight down along the house wall below the white pipes. It is designed to fill up with water when it starts raining, and has a round empty plastic ball the same width as the pipe inside it. When the ball floats to the top, it hits a seal so that the rest of the rain goes straight into the tank. This means that any leaves, dirt, bird poo or other nasty stuff gets washed off into the diverter, and the rest of the rainwater is much cleaner and goes into the tank. The diverter has a small hole at the bottom so that it slowly drains away and is ready to repeat the process the next time it rains.

     The diverter is designed to drain into a garden hose, so you can direct it away from your house. Unfortunately the bottom seal always leaks so I had to put a container underneath to catch both the drips and the intended leakage, and then another hose coming from the bottom of the container which goes down into a garden bed. Below is the tiny hole it is designed to slowly leak from.

         The pic below shows the ball and the filter just before I reassemble after cleaning. This kit was available from Bunnings for about 20 bucks, and then you supply your own pipe, and adjust the length to suit the size of your roof.

          We also added an outlet pipe for when the tank overflows as you can kinda see on the right of the below pic. The pipe comes out just below the top of the tank, turns a corner and goes down the side of the the tank, turns another corner and the pipe continues a couple of metres away from the tank.

          We painted the pipes with grey paint which is tinted to exactly match the Colorbond grey on the trim of the house. This both changes it from looking horrible ugly to quite classy, and also protects the plastic pipes from degrading as quickly in the sun. Unfortunately plastic hates being painted and it peels off with the slightest bump, but a few coats mostly did a decent job.

          I will admit that these downpipes have blown down a couple of times when we have had big strong winds come through with storms, but a quick repair job and they have been faithfully putting water into our fancy tank every time it rains. It was even overflowing after the heavy rains we have had over the last month. Very happy!