Water Worries - So we are Increasing our Water Storage

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:01]Water shortages, not something you really think about in good old rainy Britain, but after an unusually dry April and the talk of a super El Nino, we are increasing our water storage here on the plot and in our garden.

[00:00:16]I'm Dean. I'm Kirsty. And we are Heart's Humble Homestead.

[00:00:22]Hope you enjoy the video.

[00:00:36]A super El Nino, a very strong El Nino, is when Pacific waters go over the average temperature by 2° C or more.

[00:00:44]This can potentially cause heat waves and droughts all over the world.

[00:00:51]So for us, it means that we could be getting a long, dry, hot summer, which is great for the slug population, but not for crops, especially in raised beds and planters.

[00:01:06]So we could be experiencing droughts and hosepipe bans, which is why it's so important for us to increase our water storage.

[00:01:13]The biggest change that we are making is adding an IBC tank to our rainwater collection that holds 1,000 L of water or 275 US gallons, which is brilliant for what we need.

[00:01:29]We got this one from my dad as he had a spare, but there are lots of used ones available on Facebook Marketplace for around the price of buying a new water butt.

[00:01:40]So if you've got the space, this might be worth doing.

[00:01:47]We picked here for the IBC tank as the large shed next to us has recently had a metal sheeting roof put on, so it'll be great for the rain run off.

[00:01:57]The tea shed will also block the IBC tank from the direct sun. So, hopefully the evaporation will be less.

[00:02:28]We've added a black cover to the tank to help prevent the algae growth.

[00:02:42]As we used recycled guttering, it isn't [music] in perfect condition, which means one of the ends has a small leak.

[00:02:50]So, instead of messing around repairing it, what we decided [music] to do was add the old water butt that was where the IBC tank [music] is now to this area, which increases our water storage even more.

[00:03:17]Unfortunately, there's no access to get an IBC tank into our back garden. So, we've got a range of different tubs and containers that hold water. Well, this one is an old bin that fits next to our back door which is in our paved area.

[00:03:32]And it's just got some mesh water butt covers that were only a few pounds on eBay and Amazon.

[00:03:37]And that just keeps the large materials out.

[00:03:42]We've also got that tub there as we do have a slight leak in the guttering and that just drops into there and I can use that for filling our watering cans.

[00:03:54]We have a large water butt here.

[00:03:57]We're just waiting for some clips to attach it to this greenhouse. I've also put one of them mesh covers on there.

[00:04:03]I'm going to put them on all of them cuz they're cheap to have and it just saves the taps getting clogged up.

[00:04:14]On top of the chicken enclosure, we've got this tarp from where it was leaking.

[00:04:18]So, what we are going to do is repurpose one of the old feed tubs and put it just at the back and run some more of the excess guttering on and put it in that corner.

[00:04:30]And that will also be a third water butt in our garden.

[00:04:35]Hi guys, me again. If you are finding yourself enjoying the content of our channel, please do consider subscribing, leaving a like, little comment down the bottom. It really does help channel tremendously. Thank you for all your love and support. It's greatly appreciated. Now, back to the video.

[00:04:52]First of the risk of droughts and hose pipe burns, another thing we will be doing because we do grow a lot in pots and raised beds is mulching our crops.

[00:05:01]We will be using things like well-rotted manure and rhubarb leaves because grass clippings is not something we have because we do use clover as it doesn't need cutting, the bees love it and the chickens love it.

[00:05:19]And we don't really have access to wood chip at the moment. The local areas don't seem to be giving it away as much now. It's quite expensive to buy.

[00:05:27]Just a quick add-on. If you are mulching, please make sure you leave a little gap around the stem of the crop that you're mulching so you don't get rot. And also keep checking for slugs as mulch does provide an excellent environment for them.

[00:05:49]>> Absolutely. See the size of them. They make a fantastic mulch.

[00:05:54]And they can't be eaten because they're toxic, but they do no harm on your soil.

[00:06:00]Time for a Rubarb crumble.

[00:06:02]With water storage being in the news and everything at the moment, our question for the other channels that we collaborate with this week, uh what storage solutions for water do you have in place and will you be increasing them?

[00:06:17]So now let's see what they had to say on this topic.

[00:06:21]Hi Kersey, hi Dean. Um I love your question. It's a really important one as well. Um your question is what water storage systems do you have in place and what are you planning on adding any more?

[00:06:33]Well, I've gone a little bit um different with my water storage. Um I'm in front of my shed, which is the only building on the property and it's quite small and it's water shed from the roof really would not be adequate to service everything I need. So I have um other ways of collecting and storing water. Let's go take a look.

[00:06:57]This is my borehole cover. It's not very interesting, but it's a necessity because I have animals on the farm that I really need to make sure have water at all times. Um I need a reliable source of water.

[00:07:08]But because I don't want to keep drawing water from the land and the water table, I have some other measures on my permaculture farm to recharge those aquifers and restore water back into the ground and the land. Let's take a look at some of those.

[00:07:25]Now one of the methods for slowing and spreading the water and having it absorb into land is this woodland at the bottom of the farm. I don't bring people down here very much and I don't talk about it very much, but this it is a 1,300 tree woodland of all native species and the roots of the trees provide channels down into the ground which allows the water to sink in and absorb into the ground and charge up the underground aquifers.

[00:07:55]And before we put this woodland in, we had water that just cascaded and rolled down this hill and straight off the property and that now absorbs nicely.

[00:08:07]Let's go have a look at the swales.

[00:08:10]This is my swale ditch >> [clears throat] >> which fills up with water when it rains and then slowly seeps into the swale berm where the long roots of the perennials can access that water all summer long.

[00:08:22]The last strategy I plan to use on my farm for saving and storing water is to create some ponds at the top on the high ground.

[00:08:32]That way the water can be rain water can be collected and saved and stored for later use in the year. Thank you again for the really great question and I'll see you again next time.

[00:08:43]Hi Dean, hi Cassie. Jim and Low from Fields and Floats. Lovely to be back on the channel and we really enjoyed your question.

[00:08:50]What would we do or what is our water storage and what are we planning to do?

[00:08:56]Well, we've got some IBCs at the moment that just collect a little bit of rain water but our storage is actually depletes very quickly with what we're doing. Yeah, we've only we only actually collect the water off is it one of the greenhouses?

[00:09:08]>> Yeah. Um but in Wales we get so much so much rain. It's we were having a discussion about it, weren't we? And we were sort of saying it's it's odd because you get so much rain you feel you should collect it or just collect as much as you possibly can but then because you get so much rain, you you don't necessarily need to.

[00:09:25]>> necessarily here we've noticed the drought is seems far away. Yeah.

[00:09:30]>> We've got a creek at the bottom of our garden that forever flows. It's never been out in living memory of the neighbors.

[00:09:38]Uh so we're quite lucky there. We'd like to see if we could somehow maybe bit you know reservoir it not to disturb things too much but just so we can collect a bit more water down there in an emergency. It's not loads of water but it always trickles, doesn't it? It's I would absolutely love and it's on my priority list. Whether we'll ever get the money to do it because it's we've looked into it it'd be about £10,000 which is a hell of a lot for it. But we're above a natural spring here that feeds into that creek and so we could get a borehole into that natural spring which is very appealing, very attractive and who knows maybe in the future but at the moment £10,000 is too much.

[00:10:23]>> Yeah. A well too much for our Oh god, yeah. Yeah. But the other thing which I find quite useful that we do and it's purely by accident is that it's one of those things that we've always got jugs, tubs and wheelbarrows sitting about. When it does rain, a few days of long rain but the I mean it we always shocks us, doesn't it, how much the wheelbarrows fill up so quickly. And actually then when I'm pottering around it's the pots that are around the house rather than have to keep filling up the watering can with the taps. Actually it's quite easy just to leave a few empty buckets and tubs around and you can just dump the water and get the kids can dump it to play. So it's kind of I think just leaving things out with nothing in that can just be filled up by the rainfall, isn't it? It's always handy and then cuz they're dotted around there's always one nearby. But we are very lucky to live in one of the wettest parts of the country. Mhm. So uh It has its pros and cons. It has its pros and cons [laughter] and in the summer that's definitely a con. Yeah. Pro. Pro?

[00:11:17]Definitely a pro.

[00:11:18]>> [laughter] >> Cheers guys. See you next time.

[00:11:22]Hi Dean. [clears throat] Hi Kirsty. It's Emma at Otter Wood Cottage and you asked about water storage. So we were really lucky when we bought this house. The owners not the ones before us, but the ones before that, converted what was an old derelict cottage into the property that it is now. And in order to get permission to do that and to put the extension on the property that they wanted, they had to comply with certain rules. And one of the rules was that they had to install a 3,000 L water storage tank under the property. And they've done that and popped this rather twee, but quite cute, little wishing well above it.

[00:12:03]So, this has a pump and a tap here, which we use for watering our main veg plot. And that is a rainwater capture system from all the roofs in the property. Now, we did find that last year with the drought that everybody suffered, that 3,000 L didn't last. And so, we have actually upgraded our system and we purchased two second-hand IBC tanks, 1,000 L each.

[00:12:34]And we are now filling these from the 3,000 L capture system, so that we can water the veg plot from straight from these IBCs. And that will actually make our lives quite a lot easier this year because as you can see, these are much closer to the veg plot than that wishing well is. So, we just when the the IBCs run out, we'll fill those back up again with the pump from the wishing well. So, this year we have a total of 5,000 L of water capture.

[00:13:07]It'll be interesting to see if that lasts us through the summer. And if not, then we have the option to get some more IBCs to keep upgrading.

[00:13:18]Great question, very pertinent right now.

[00:13:20]And thanks for having me on again. I'll see you next time. Bye.

[00:13:25]Thank you, guys, for those absolutely amazing answers. Thoroughly enjoyed watching them videos. It was amazing.

[00:13:31]And for anybody who hasn't, go and check their channels out. They are absolutely brilliant. You will not regret it.

[00:13:38]And if you want to see what we have answered on their channels, check them out, too.

[00:13:44]In addition to increase now water shortage, we will also be making more use of gray water. Gray water is the leftover water from your shower, washing up, or even doing your laundry.

[00:13:58]Gray water is ideal for your indoor plants or your non-edible plants.

[00:14:04]You can also use it for plants where you don't directly eat the plant itself, such as fruit bushes and fruit trees, but not things like blueberries as the gray water can lower the acidity of the soil.

[00:14:19]Gray water doesn't store well as pathogens can develop, so it's best used within a day.

[00:14:26]And when you're watering your plants with it, it's best to pour onto the soil rather than the plants themselves as the soil itself is a natural filter to get rid of any debris. A future plan for us is to replumb where the washing machine waste pipe is, so it goes directly into the garden as we don't use any toxic products anywhere, so it will be fine for that. And we also only do washing on days where it's not raining, so the clothes can go out on the line.

[00:14:55]So, it's not going to be excess water when it's already pouring down outside.

[00:15:00]Future plans, we really would like to add some sort of water catchment system to the front garden, but it is a sun trap.

[00:15:09]But we do get plenty of run-off when it does rain. So, what we do currently is just when it's raining, we put some buckets and watering cans under where the run-off is, and then we use that for watering the greenhouses. But we would like something a bit more future-proof, but we don't have a lot of space out there with the victory garden. So we need a small option that holds as much as possible.

[00:15:30]Another thing we are planning is joining few water butts together in our back garden, but with us being limited on space, we're thinking of putting some sort of plant pot on top of them so we can still grow some salads and things in that space and to make the most use as possible of the space we have while increasing our water storage.

[00:15:53]So that's how us and other YouTubers are storing our water this year. How will you be storing yours? Let us know in the comments below.

[00:16:01]Thank you for watching everybody. And have a lovely day. Bye.

[00:16:05]>> Bye.

[00:16:08]>> [laughter] [snorts]