April showers bring May fry?

[2wheelsx2, posts: 924]

I wouldn't be so concerned with airborne pollution, but rather what lurks in the gutters: bird faeces, microorganisms, decomposing leaves, algae, general organic sludge etc.

I guess it would depend on the overall cleanliness of the gutters, but could certainly have the potential to reduce water quality if they were pretty clogged up.

That's a given there. I'd flush them all out every week before collecting if I were doing this.

[Shane]

All you had to say was "potomac". lol

I almost wrote "Polutomac" but was not sure everyone would get it.

Enter in Google "Polutomac river" and it returns "Did you mean: potomac river." Can't make that up.

-Shane

PS I cleaned the gutters a few weeks ago really well, but am not sure it would make a big difference here where the leaves are all oak and maple. I would be much more concerned if my gutters were packed full of old rotting pine needles.

[Scleropages, posts: 425]

I almost wrote "Polutomac"

Ha! Good one. There are some pretty good amalgamations of words out there. One of my favorites is "diabesity".

[dw1305, posts: 347]

Hi all,

It's not so bad in my area, because I essentially live a northern rainforest (Vancouver, Canada), where it rains 250+ days a year, but drizzling rain.

Absolutely perfect, all of those rainy days (and snow) will very effectively remove all aerosols from your rain-water, and I would be very surprised if you have any more than 10MicroS conductivity of solutes in your rain water. We don't get much snow here, but big wet flakes of snow are a brilliant for cleaning the air up, and the only time my rain water has been anything near pure H2O was after the snow in 2010/11. <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31713&p=207735>.

I wouldn't be so concerned with airborne pollution, but rather what lurks in the gutters: bird faeces, microorganisms, decomposing leaves, algae, general organic sludge etc.
I guess it would depend on the overall cleanliness of the gutters, but could certainly have the potential to reduce water quality if they were pretty clogged up.

This is one of the reasons for having 2 water butts linked together with a tap, you can drain and clean the butt linked to the diverter, without losing all of your water. The second butt, from which you draw the water, always remains free of organic debris.

I also think that gutter/downpipe with a diverter will be much cleaner than one without, instead of all the sparrows nests, moss, lichen, leaves etc. ending up in the down-pipe, blocking the soak-away and/or sewer, they are trapped by the diverter, and need to be removed to ensure that water flows into the water butt.

Because of this requirement for cleaning the diverter, I ensure that I can remove it, whilst leaving the rest of the down pipe in place.

cheers Darrel