I also have a bog standard 300L green butt on my garage, with the downpipe straight into a hole in the lid and an additional overflow tap on the side of the butt as @stephentame describes. It fills in an hour or two during heavy rain. I have fixed a short length of ordinary hose to the overflow tap, then converted it to a 25m seep hose where it hits a large, long bed. When the butt is full, the seep hose functioning, but the rain keeps coming to fast, excess water just spills out of the top of the butt and disperses into the ground. I am currently mulling over how to capture this excess as well...
If you have space for more butts alongside the one with the downpipe going into it, you can connect them together so that when the first one gets full to the level of the connector, the second one starts filling and so on. I have a line of three connected with this type of connector (I bought them locally - the Am***n link is just to show the kind of thing)
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
The only possible issue I see with running the downpipe directly into the water butt is debris. If it's not filtered somewhere, then leaves, moss, and general dusty crud could end up in the water butt. Maybe it'd make life more difficult to clean the water butt in time, maybe it'd clog the overflow. It's probably not that much of a problem most of the time.
Do the diverters tend to catch much crud? I know there are ones with filters, but I'm talking the more basic ones. I suppose that because they are a tray that sits around the edge of the pipe, they'll collect less debris than the pipe going directly into a water butt.
I really do need to get something sorted out. I think I've enough downpipe in case I make a meal of cutting the existing one. What was it, measure once, cut twice?
You could rig some kind of a filter on the end of the downpipe. If your tap is a few inches above the bottom of the water butt, crud should settle below that and not block the tap. I think going direct to the butt makes sense, even better if your overflow goes to a soakaway rather than the drain.
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour".
Unfortunately I don’t have the space where that one is @JennyJ, it’s in a corner next to the garage door with steps the other side, but I am thinking of connecting another of the slimline fancy butts to the existing one on the house, lots of space there.
I have a scrap of mozzie net mesh filter over the end the end of the downpipe that goes straight into the lid (as Loxely suggests) attached with strong elastic bands and it works well, easy enough to clean out occasionally. The excess pouring out from the lid goes into the ground as there is no drain for the garage guttering, but at least the grass is lush there!
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
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Do the diverters tend to catch much crud? I know there are ones with filters, but I'm talking the more basic ones. I suppose that because they are a tray that sits around the edge of the pipe, they'll collect less debris than the pipe going directly into a water butt.
I really do need to get something sorted out. I think I've enough downpipe in case I make a meal of cutting the existing one. What was it, measure once, cut twice?
I have a scrap of mozzie net mesh filter over the end the end of the downpipe that goes straight into the lid (as Loxely suggests) attached with strong elastic bands and it works well, easy enough to clean out occasionally. The excess pouring out from the lid goes into the ground as there is no drain for the garage guttering, but at least the grass is lush there!