Letters&Opinion

Low voltage electric tools may serve our many needs

- CN Westerman by email

TODAY we are told that Britain needs to build more reservoirs, because the climate is changing. That would be socially and intellectually sensible, for many simple and complex reasons.

But there is also a huge opportunity open to us, that the homes in which we live can become a more ‘immediate, low scale, low cost,’ answer to our problems, as well as depending on the elevated mountains of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and North England for water and electricity.

Many of the roofs of 12 million homes are well suited to gather pure rain in roof gutters, diverting it to as many 50 gallon plastic butts at ground level as are judged best, each inter-connected at the same surface level, recycled from earlier use in industry. Each connected butt overflows collectively to the present drainage system, leaving each home with a small reservoir for garden and plant pot irrigation, car and general cleaning, at low exertion and expense.

There is no sense in a national system which pumps millions of gallons of pure water away from where plants need it, to damage a purification plant by overloading, when a small proportion of that same clean rain, if stored widely in compact butts, could feed the glory of roses in pots, or lettuce on a plate.

All gardeners become less helpless, with a handy source of water, which may become the vital resource of that year. The burden on public water treatment plants is reduced (privatised or not), making them more efficient and less of a public menace when they overflow.