Our reluctant response to Cape Towns Drought - First Salvo

Well, a week to winter and we have not even had 20 millimetres of rain. Our dams are down to 11% usable water and we face the very real prospect of having no sewerage and running water in taps.

3500 liter tank for capturing rainwater

Now I was not terribly enamored when I found this laying in the backyard, and my gal's statement "I bought it....you install it"
So Saturday morning I set about preparing the platform for the tank

I purchased sixteen 400 x 400 x 35mm concrete pavers and cleared and leveled the area and started placing the pavers so..

Only to realise that these were the wrong pavers.... not concrete but a mixture of cement and clay. These would not support 3500 Kg's of weight.

So back to the drawing board, cart all the pavers back into the boot of my car and back to the building depot for a return and refund.

Yesterday morning (Tuesday) I saw that rain was expected Wednesday and Friday so quickly phoned my line manager and told him I was taking a days leave to install the water tank.

He laughed and said..."Best of luck if you are doing it alone. You have a lot of work to do"

I managed to find the correct concrete slabs 600mm x 600mm x 50mm in size. When I told the yard manager I was putting them in my boot he said my car would never cope, took mercy on me and had them delivered for free.
I then went looking for the connection pipes... bloody hell, do you have any idea how many similar looking piece of platic there is all with subtly different use cases? Anyway in the end I left the store with a variety of connectors and elbows and glue and 6 meters of piping.

Now I am not a spring chicken and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that by the time I had completed the above work I was ready to fall over from pain and exhaustion. Two fellows carried the slabs one by one onto a trolley and placed them on my property, and then I had to carry them to the back on my own... a carry of 20 meters or so... then level, pick up change level replace ... until the spirit level showed level in all directions.

Cutting holes in an aluminium gutter and attaching down pipe fittings while balancing tentatively on a ladder was time consuming and tedious. To be truthful I was too tired and impatient to take a lot of pictures of the progress I was making so how about we skip to the crux of the matter ... the almost completed installation..

Tank in place with the gutter feed connected and entering the tank through a hole I cut in the lid

Unfortunately I had the tank close to the wall so could not fit the overflow pipe at the back so decided to fit it at the front. My good lady was not impressed so I will be doing this over again on the weekend as she advised that she found a different fitting which we can use at the back of the tank.

Despite being sore and exhausted I was very proud of what I had achieved

The overflow still needs to be extended down the garden wall to the drain but that is simple work ... and this stage we may not even need it this winter.

Thanks for reading my 'brag' post ... I sometimes believe I may yet have a bit of the handyman in me...somewhere