Kitchen Garden Forum

I am shortly going to put up a shed and collect rain water from it.

Reading through instructions on how to hang guttering, it seems that I can only have one down pipe per side running off this, feeding a single butt. However, I have around three butts that I need to fill.

I have seen water butting linking kits advertised, which appear to require a length of flexi-hose to be screwed into a hole cut into the side of the butt (mine are open barrels, so no problem with doing that). What worries me a bit is that the vague instructions suggest "some drilling required".

I have an electric drill, but I am guessing that this needs a special kind of cutting attachment to make the hole in the side of the butt. If I am correct, where might I find one of these and do they simply fit into the end of any electric drill?

DIY is NOT my strong suite!

Browse the drill bit section at your local Homebase (other diy shed - stores are available) you'll find things that look like a saw blade has been welded into a ring.
Another view is a small tin has had one end cut off and teeth made in the sharp end.

These, with appropriate connector fit a standard electric drill.

Mine came in one of those, "all the drill accessories you'll ever need in a plastic attache case/makeup box" type things, 1'×10"×1.5" hinged at the handle one side clear plastic, everything clipped in it's slot, by Black&Decker. From memory you can get the cutter rings as a set, nested inside each other as a separate item.

Bottom right of the case in the attached picture.

If you already have taps on all the butts you can link them at the top as an overflow system, perhaps easier to do and a bit of a leak wouldn't be such an issue. If you link them at the bottom you only need one tap per set and only one butt needs two holes so if they are already drilled you only need one extra hole. Using leak sealing silicone always helps.

Drilling these larger sized holes must be a problem for a lot people...
so come on waterbutt companies put an extra hole in the top, with a bung in it.

I already have lots of blue barrels that I use as butts. I inherited some which already have connecting holes at the top, but need to integrate four more into the burgeoning system given that we have no ground water at our current site

I'm rather hoping I can just buy the cutter ring with the diameter I need, otherwise these will turn out to be very expensive butts indeed...

oldherbaceous wrote:Drilling these larger sized holes must be a problem for a lot people...
so come on waterbutt companies put an extra hole in the top, with a bung in it.

morning OH
Many of the water butts are designed with a overflow point on, still needs drilling out though although some have just a thinner membrane at that point so fittings can be pushed hard to make a fit.

Barry wrote:
I'm rather hoping I can just buy the cutter ring with the diameter I need, otherwise these will turn out to be very expensive butts indeed...

Hi Barry, it is highly likely your local hardware store will have small sets of these cutting rings. They are not that expensive and my local hardware shop sells them cheaper than Homebase or B & Q