Sunday, September 06, 2015

Getting my inner hippie off the grid

It rains quite a bit here, compared to the rest of Italy. The nice old lady who lives next door has quite an extensive kitchen garden, and also has a whole series of huge blue rain barrels around the back of her house, attached to all the downspouts.

How to build a rain-collection system

I gotta do this, this year. The landlord said he'd turn on the garden tap, which right now is shut off, but I would get the bill for the extra water. So far, I've been doing pretty well with keeping the garden alive by saving the bathwater. But as the garden gets bigger - and I really want to do a vegetable bed and maybe a few potato and squash barrels next year - it's going to end up being a pretty significant added expense. I've seen that a lot of people have often quite elaborate rain-collection systems. One house on the other side of town has a ginormous blue water tank with an obviously elaborate filtration system. I wondered if they run all their household water on rain.

Nonetheless, one starts small and works up. It looks like for this plan the biggest expense will be the power drill. I've been wanting one for a long time, and it looks like the most multi-useful power tool I could choose for my zero-budget for tools. I know the Agridea has quite a selection. Anyone got any suggestions what kind I should get?



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