My garage and drive are at the bottom of my garden and with living in an upstairs masionette means running a hose isn't always a quick option, it can be done but takes a while to sort out. I've been using water butts to collect water for a few years now and use a Hozelock butt pump to run a hose for washing the cars and watering the garden.
After reading Steelghosts thread :
http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=369407
I decided to do the same sort of thing, but as my pump is a submersable one, I could leave it in the butt full time and connect a hose as and when needed.
All parts came from Ebay, mainly for ease of ordering rather than cost, the filter is a 100 micron one, the hose is 19mm internal and all fittings are either 19mm or 3/4" BSP, a standard Hozelock type connector was used to as a connection to either a hose or pressure washer.
I found I needed a tap fitted to the top of the butt otherwise the water syphoned out with the pump switched off.
The first thing to do was make a new lid for a water butt, for this I used decking, painted it with fence paint and cut it to size. A hole was drilled through the middle to allow the hose through,
All the fittings needed.
Filter mounted on a board
and mounted insitu under the tree by the drive, out of sight.
top of water butt with tap and 90° bends fitted, tap is a twist type 90° for on/off.
Pump attached on camlock fittings so it can be removed incase of water freezing in winter. It just hangs in the bottom of butt about 4 inches from the base so as not to collect too much debris
3 butts are fed from the garage roof, the pump sits in the last butt and is fed from an outside electric socket throught the wall of garage.
Well, that works :
Apart from the pump, I think all the fittings cost about £50, they could probably be sourced cheaper by a few pence if you shopped about. The most expensive bits were the cam lock fittings.
I've been thinking about the filters and have a Karcher filter in the garage not used, I'm thinking of moving the filter I already have to between butts 2 and 3 and mounting the Karcher on the board, this has better filtration, maybe a job for next year now.
So far this has worked great and having 'free' water is very satisfying. In use it's so easy to connect a hose or the pressure washer, flick a switch and have running water as the pump is already primed, as long as it rains ocassionally to fill the butts I'm ok.
After reading Steelghosts thread :
http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=369407
I decided to do the same sort of thing, but as my pump is a submersable one, I could leave it in the butt full time and connect a hose as and when needed.
All parts came from Ebay, mainly for ease of ordering rather than cost, the filter is a 100 micron one, the hose is 19mm internal and all fittings are either 19mm or 3/4" BSP, a standard Hozelock type connector was used to as a connection to either a hose or pressure washer.
I found I needed a tap fitted to the top of the butt otherwise the water syphoned out with the pump switched off.
The first thing to do was make a new lid for a water butt, for this I used decking, painted it with fence paint and cut it to size. A hole was drilled through the middle to allow the hose through,
All the fittings needed.
Filter mounted on a board
and mounted insitu under the tree by the drive, out of sight.
top of water butt with tap and 90° bends fitted, tap is a twist type 90° for on/off.
Pump attached on camlock fittings so it can be removed incase of water freezing in winter. It just hangs in the bottom of butt about 4 inches from the base so as not to collect too much debris
3 butts are fed from the garage roof, the pump sits in the last butt and is fed from an outside electric socket throught the wall of garage.
Well, that works :
Apart from the pump, I think all the fittings cost about £50, they could probably be sourced cheaper by a few pence if you shopped about. The most expensive bits were the cam lock fittings.
I've been thinking about the filters and have a Karcher filter in the garage not used, I'm thinking of moving the filter I already have to between butts 2 and 3 and mounting the Karcher on the board, this has better filtration, maybe a job for next year now.
So far this has worked great and having 'free' water is very satisfying. In use it's so easy to connect a hose or the pressure washer, flick a switch and have running water as the pump is already primed, as long as it rains ocassionally to fill the butts I'm ok.