Cleaning the water butt

So we had a month of rain, which was fantastic as it enabled us to fill up our water butt and many other containers. But rather too quickly, after a week or so of no rain, we were out of water. Rain, though, is threatening to come back and with that in mind, we thought it was a good idea to give the water butt a bit of a clean.

Normally, apparently, we're supposed to clean out the water butt once a year. But in all honesty we installed the water butt at least two years ago and haven't lifted a finger in the way of giving it a tidy up. So now that the water butt was as empty as we could get it using its inbuilt tap, sorting it out was long over-stinky-due.

As you can see, looking down into the remaining water, it's pretty horrible! Apparently these dregs can be used to heat up the compost bin, but we've got an ailing buddleia, so we thought we'd use it on that in an attempt to bring it back to life. Which is what you can see to the left!

After this we gave it a rinse out with some water. We decided not to go the whole hog this time and strub the sides. As we're just coming in to 'summer' the water butt will be in constant use and hopefully there won't be much opportunity for algae and what-not to form. It's something that we'll probably do in the winter. During winter, when hopefully I'll have more energy, I'll also clean out the guttering that feeds the water butt. Unfortunately some of it is from the neighbours, so I won't be able to clean that - but every little helps.

Lucy also bought the treatment in the photo to the left that we pour into the water butt every so often. Now that the water butt is a bit cleaner, it'll actually have a fighting chance of helping us out by reducing algae and sludge. But again, this is probably something to use more when the water will be sitting there for a while and is less useful when the water level is constantly fluctuating. 

When we first installed the water butt we decided to put the down pipe straight through the top of the water butt - this was a bad idea we when saw how much water we could collect from the garage roof! After changing to a configuration whereby the excess can now be diverted back to the drain, we had a hole in the top of the water butt. This was used by wildlife last year - but Lucy, ingeniously, has placed part of an old hamster ball over the hole totally covering it! This will keep the water in the butt 'wholesome', which is good.

So now I'm just waiting for the rain

And waiting.

What are you experiences with water butts and keeping them clean?