Get Your Household Rainwater Harvesting This Spring

A great and simple way to re-use water in your home is with a water butt or rainwater harvesting system. We were given the opportunity to trial a Free Flush rainwater harvesting system here at GreenFinder HQ so we could save water and reuse it for the garden and other household jobs. We chose the ‘Original Prestige Wall Mounted Butt’ that can hold up to 100 litres of water as the slim line design suited our garden and is also safe for children and pets.

The Team Behind FreeFlush

The team behind freeflush include Chartered Civil Engineers, Hydrologists and Water Quality Scientists with extensive experience in hydrology, hydraulics and water quality. Their experience has been gained through years of working in the water industry on large scale water capture, storage and reuse schemes.

Their designs range from simple wall hung water butts through to large underground tanks with pumped control and their aim is to make rainwater harvesting more accessible to households through their innovative products. Here at GreenFinder we can certainly testify to this and the fact that we are now recycling our rainwater is fantastic not only in terms of saving water and money on water bills but the fact that we are also cutting our carbon footprint.

Benefits

Rainwater is actually better than mains water for garden use as the rainwater is soft and is largely free of minerals, salts and chemicals. Rainwater is also slightly acidic which is what most plants prefer. Harvested rainwater can be used for washing decking or patios, as water to flush the toilet, for car washing and for laundry.

We’ve recently rehomed four ex-battery chickens and the butt has been invaluable for washing their feeding trays and drinking containers and in the last month alone we have used it for cleaning mops, buckets, muddy wellies and outdoor toys. Rain permitting it will hopefully meet all our gardening needs throughout the summer too.

Installation

Basic DIY skills are needed for installing the wall mounted butts. We found the instructions relatively straightforward although it did take us two hours to install rather than the one hour stated. Nevertheless those two hours were a great investment of time and have reaped dividends in the amount of water we have saved just in the past couple of months.

If you are keen to get your household rainwater harvesting you can visit the Freeflush website here. Use voucher code greenfinder5 to receive 5% off one of their designs.