It’s very frustrating. It’s absolutely pouring down at the moment, flooding the street and the garden, but the water tank is barely filling up.

So we’ve spent the money, and put in a great tank. What it now highlights  is the problems with the existing house.

In particular:

• The side gutter is hanging off the house at a funny angle, and is full of holes. So more water goes off the edge of the gutter than into the tank.
• At the back of the house, the gutter consistently fills up with leaves, due to the poor design.
• Some madman also put in two right-angle joints to the downpipe, which almost immediately block with leaves.

We’ll have to tackle this in two stages. The first step is to replace the side gutter with a new Smartflo gutter, must get this done in the next few weeks.

I have fewer options at the back. With a planned extension in the pipeline, it doesn’t make financial sense to replace the gutter. So I think I’ll:

• get some cheap leaf guards
• get our handyman to bodge some new downpipes, getting rid of the crazy right-angles

It all seems so simple in the brochure, just another thing to be aware of when retrofitting a water tank…