Review - Water Butt supplied by Idealo

In the wake of the recent water shortages ( I know we had a wet April, but a few hot weeks in May may well have removed any benefit from that!) I think we are all particularly interested in ways in which to make our garden or allotment more water efficient.

Obviously watering wisely, mulching the soil surface after watering, watering late in the evening and growing less thirsty plants are all good tips, but saving rainwater and reusing "Gray" water is also a good idea.

Fitting water butts to downpipes on your house, garage, shed or greenhouse etc is one way to harvest free water from the sky. However since the announcement of the hose pipe ban in my county I have noticed is that there have been few or no water butts for sale in my local garden centres and I gather a similar situation exists in other areas.

I already have a couple of water butts but was thinking of getting a few more, as if our borehole water supply fails for any reason I have one or maybe two days, at most, saved up in the butts to keep the crops in the poly tunnel growing.

So I was delighted when I was contacted recently by  Idealo , who offered me the chance to have a water butt to review. Idealo is a UK price comparison website that compares a huge range of garden products, from hand tools such as trowels and shovels to larger pieces of machinery like lawn mowers and garden shredders.

I chose one like this one  as it was large ( 200 l) and a pleasant green colour. It also seemed a good price (£59.99) for all the fittings which it came with.


Idealo arranged for its delivery to me and it was ordered and shipped to me in 2 days.

Unfortunately it arrived the day the rain stopped and the sun began to blaze away, but I am sure we will get some more rain soon!

 
No packaging - apart from the black plastic and tape :-)

Stand and tap and connector kit all stored inside the butt - all included in the price which I was impressed with.

The tap plugs into the hole but you have to reach inside to do up the internal plastic nut which fixes it on  - good job Compostman has longer arms than me !

The capacity of the butt is 200 l, which is a good size.

I think it looks very nice, as far as such things can look nice.

There are pre drilled holes so you can fix it to the down pipe from either left or right - and which ever hole you don't use has a handy plug.

The lid locks in place so it is a safe feature if you have small children around.

I can't wait to put it in place and save yet more water, just in case! Thank you to Tommy at Idealo for sending the butt to me to review.