It was a nice sunny day today so I cleaned the patio today - using power from directly the solar panels. I wouldn't normally do it at this time of year, but when we expanded the pond recently the patio got more dirty than usual.
This gave me the chance to try a new set-up for using rainwater from the new waterbutt.
1/
Here's the set-up for the water. We installed a slimline 400 litre waterbutt earlier this year, this is attached to the house gutters via a filter. It probably collects about a third of the rain off the roof and fills up really quickly.
The waterbutt has a 3/4 inch tap, so I bought a 3/4 inch hose to fit on that. This connects via a 3/4 -> 1/2 inch adapter to the standard hose pipes that the pressure washer uses.
2/
The 3/4 inch tap and the size (400 litre) of the waterbutt gives some good pressure. If you pre-fill the hose, then the pressure washer can also "suck" the water in and was able to work on full pressure.
The important part is that the waterbutt has a filter on it (not shown here), so that debris doesn't get into the butt.
It was only a "quick" clean, and I used about half of the water - much better than using out of the tap.
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Mark Banner