We have bought a couple of different rain water diverters.  But, they block up easily if leaves get in them and also don’t cope with heavy rain – quite a lot of water then overflows back into the stormwater.   I could add a leaf excluder, but they are about $50 each.  The diverter seem a lot more complicated than they need to be – partly because they try to put excess water back into the storm water.

So I decided to try making one that combines a diverter with leaf.  I want to divert all the water – I’ll change this if the garden ever gets too wet.

Here is my first try:

   

An empty liquid fertilizer bottle, a small piece of gutter protector, a grey water hose and some silver tape. Cost – almost nothing.

I made one mistake in that I cut right through the downpipe and then found that it was better to have it flattened so it supports the top part of the downpipe (there isn’t a bracket above the cut off bit of downpipe to hold it up). 

I think that the hose I’ve used to take away the water may not be large enough – if the bottle overflows, I’ll just have to get a larger hose and cut some of the neck of the bottle away so it fits.

We have a thunderstorm here now – so it is being tested.  In very heavy rain the hose is too small to take away the water.  I also need to attach the gutter guard better – it has come off.  Once the rain eased back to a more normal level the smaller hose was sufficient.

Is that a berry, or an eye watching you pass by?

We participated in Earth Hour tonight. After turning off all our lights and appliances (except the fridge) we walked down to ANU to watch the fire twirling on the oval. They had made a world globe using candles in paper bags. The fire twirlers were dancing to African drums.

Interested to see the news to see how many people joined in around Australia.