I think ForTheBees has the right idea. Have never come across a beautiful water butt over here, they are all plastic monstrosities. My thinking is to construct a wooden shelter like a wheely bin store, big enough to take the butt plus space to store the hose reel, another essential but ugly piece of garden kit thats impractical to store away in the shed.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Has anyone worked out how many times you need to fill a water butt, to pay for it. ? Severn Trent charge £1.45 per metered cubic metre of water.(1000 litres) So if you had three butts, with 3000 litres, you use it in a drought, then get no more until it rains again, you save £4.35. If I was building a new house, and could sink a huge water butt like the Australians have, under the lawn, and then pump it out, it might be useful.
I like that one Tinpot, lovely shape, but as you say, quite pricey for plastic. Do you have room to plant a shrub in front of it. I've managed to semi-disguise a large dark green plastic water butt behind a rose arch and in between some shrubs at the front of our house. I've had to fit a longer pipe to the diverter to the inlet and a 12" small hosepipe to the outlet so it fills a watering can but that's a small price to pay.
I started looking at water butts and came to the conclusion that even for my modest garden it's hardly worth having one unless you have a minimum of 1000-2000 litre capacity. That's partly because we don't get much rain in the South East - if you have frequent rainfall you can get away with a smaller butt.
If we had space, I would get a refurbished IBC like the one in the picture below for about £50 (1000 litre capacity) - possibly two and stack them on top of each other. They're nothing to look at, but you can grow attractive climbers up the sides to hide the butts. The only downside is the size at approx 1 x 1 x 1 metre, but that's what's needed if you want your butts to have any chance of lasting through a normal summer (let alone the one we've had this year!).
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The prestige wall mounted one would be good butnis out of stock everywhere.
Ta.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
If we had space, I would get a refurbished IBC like the one in the picture below for about £50 (1000 litre capacity) - possibly two and stack them on top of each other. They're nothing to look at, but you can grow attractive climbers up the sides to hide the butts. The only downside is the size at approx 1 x 1 x 1 metre, but that's what's needed if you want your butts to have any chance of lasting through a normal summer (let alone the one we've had this year!).