Don’t You Just Love Freebies – Great Water Butt from Idealo

The world of the web is a peculiar place at times. Often we get unsolicited emails from folks. Usually they want to let us advertise their dubious products we’ve never heard of and have no interest in finding out about. Other times they simply want us to turn the site into a spam fest sending links to folks for cash.

But once in a while an email is a pleasant surprise.

In May Tommy at Idealo got in touch to ask if we’d like a water butt. Yes indeedy I replied, expecting not to hear back from him. But low and be hold a few days later a glorious (and surprisingly large) water collection system arrived at my sister’s house (deliveries are not something we can get ordinarily so it seemed better to let her receive the freebie).

This is the water butt that arrived; the”200 Litre BLACK Waterbutt WITH STAND,+DIVERTER KIT/ Tap And Lid by Keto Plastics”, and here are a few photos provided by said sister…

Here’s what she had to say about it (after a little nagging for some feedback)…

There was a piece of paper with it but included no instructions so I know I typed in something on to my phone and with luck I have found the instructions for fitting the rain saver together (here).

Water butt arrived promptly, wrapped in cellophane and came in three pieces. OH had taken all the plastic off before I came home from work and had left it in three pieces on the patio, I had no idea how to put it together and really could not work it out. Turns out the bottom was literally a stand for the butt to sit on, who knew? This may have made more immediate sense if I’d researched to buy it my self.

Anyway, it’s huge! But that’s really great as it fits snuggly in to the corner next to the garage and holds a hell of a lot of water.

The water butt is really sturdy, even when sat on the base (which allows for easy access with a watering can). The best design feature is the lockable lid, easy to use but secure so you can be sure that no animals or stray children should be able to fall in to the water. There are two lock links that are clearly indicated on the lid so that there is no problem in aligning them.

The lid also has three drilled holes in the indented rim, this allows for rain water to fall on to the whole of the lid and then run into its channel on the edge and then through the holes. Brilliant as we still haven’t got around to fitting the rain collector bits yet. Even so the water butt is over half full of water.

As you can see from the link there are a few bits of plastic that came with the water butt, these fit onto the drain pipe to allow water to fill into the water butt.

I guess I need to go and do that know…don’t I?…. (Off she goes to fit the water butt to her downpipe as instructed! ;))

Right, have done the best I can with fitting the rain collector thingy, it works quite well as half the water I put down the drain pipe went into the butt and the other half onto the floor (our drain pipe doesn’t actually go to a drain at all). Seems the rain collector lid is missing and looking at the pictures I took on the day they arrived it was missing then. Anyhoo, I easily drilled the hole in the side and the locking nut, adapter and pipe all fitted smoothly. Next came sawing the drain pipe to fit the collector on, and this was easy, except it doesn’t really seem the best solution. Our drain pipe and the collector fit snuggly so there seemed no way for the water to go but straight down the pipe, so I decided to fit a round piece of plastic over the whole to divert water into the butt rather than the floor.

Since doing this I’ve had an even better idea anyway, seeing as our rain water goes straight on to the floor anyhow I think I’ll go back out and saw of a section of the down pipe ad refit our bendy drain pipe so that it falls straight over the water butt lid, that way all the water will go into be saved. Nifty eh?

As you can see she might not be great with instructions but she is very practical!

Since the water butt was ideal for my sister’s city garden she’s kept it which is why I forced her to write the review above!

Anyway thanks very much to Tommy at Idealo where there are tons of garden items available for the freebie!

ps – if anyone else wants to send us free stuff that is useful don’t be shy!!!