Dreadnaught.

This pictures the launch of our intrepid Tim.P and him subsequently wrestling a 4" pipe into our reservoir. He had to brave the snug fitting life jacket, coax a contrary rubber duck into position, manhandle a giant dipstick on a lump of concrete into the middle of the reservoir, fend off swarming toad tadpoles and the mirth of his colleagues in order to achieve the task. Which he did superbly!

Our reservoir is rainwater harvested from our poly tunnels and roof spaces with a little coming from nursery run off. Like most people involved in agriculture and horticulture over the past few months our reserves are low - the reservoir did not fill up to capacity over the winter months which did not help matters.

Having not had our reservoir this low before we soon realised the pump extracting water was not able to do the job with the water so low.

Tim is placing in a 'sewage' pump which pushes big volumes of water out and into a new (actually recycled) holding tank, before being chlorinated and stored for use. It has a cunning floating filter so only abstracts from the clearest water near the surface..... Or so we thought until we spotted several dozen (live) toad tadpoles in our holding tank!

They are now found in the mesh of several filters - fortunately their numbers are such that losses are negligible - much less than them getting cooked on the liner in the heat as they crawl out - yet another hazard. Thankfully large numbers do make it to safety and are found all around the area!

We are now able to use the remaining water in our reservoir which takes the pressure off our mains bill - and your available water!