A new water tank

It's cold and its wet and despite the fact that this means winter clothes, cold fingers and muddy puddles that traipse into the house on the bottom of gumboots, I'm happy.

I have been able to take the buckets out of the shower and from beneath our sinks. Those buckets will be back next summer, but for now, we can rely on the rain to water the garden and our tanks to supply the water when it doesn't.

The big downpour we had last week (which was still smaller than most of the state) recorded 21mm one day in my new rain gauge, on my new fence. Together with the decent rainfalls surrounding that big one, our garden is growing and greening up again, and our two house tanks were filled (one BIG concrete tank and a plastic one that is about 5000 litres). Through careful management, these tanks managed to keep us in water all summer - us and the garden.

But the garden did suffer as I was quite frugal with the water, so we decided to get another tank. And we installed it yesterday. This tank is about 2200 litres and isn't connected to the main plumbing system. It is filled through a hose connection that I put in at the top and will gravity feed to water the gardens and animals. Once empty, we can refill again. It's not a huge tank, but it will mean I can water the garden in summer without as much stress as this summer was.

The tank is sitting in top of a tank stand we built. The stand is clad (almost) in recycled corrugated iron and our old garage roller door. The cladding is of course not necessary for a tank stand, but it turns a tank stand into a goat shelter, therefore making more use of our available space.

The next job is to fence in the area that the tank/shelter are in to create our goat yard, and then to build the simple garden shed that will be our dairy and feed store.