When I looked out of the dining room this morning, I could see that last week’s water engineering wasn’t enough. With heavy rain, the input volume was still exceeding the capacity of the output flow and so the ground near the first set of water butts was still getting sodden.

I looked to see if I could work out an immediate solution but didn’t have the parts on hand to do much, although I did find a piece of fabric greatly reduced dripping from the extension gutter level. There’s more heavy rain expected for a few hours tomorrow so more work is needed.

I think I’ll go for a two pronged approach. Firstly, I’ll enlarge the hole in the pipe across the extension roof into a wider slit. That should let more water flow out when the rain is heavy and, with the fabric flow catcher, should further reduce input. Secondly, I’ll see if I’ve got a bit of hosing up at the allotment so I can send the outflow on a steeper slope straight into the canal. That should make the flow faster and the final water butt isn’t able to hold any more at the moment. Both provisions will be reversible when we get to dry weather again.

Right, where’s me hacksaw?