Hosepipe ban ...

... starts next week!

For the past few days we have been having storms forecast, but none so far have materialised. In view of the likelihood of today being the day when they finally happened, I decided to conduct a highly unscientific experiment –  I put an empty washing up bowl outside on our patio so that I could see how much rain we did get, if indeed it came.

Did it come? It sure did! Between 3.00 pm and 6.00 pm we had constant heavy rain, with several intense cloudbursts, and our new 40 gallon water butt which, since its installation in early July hasn't received a drop of water, suddenly found itself full and overflowing. The excess water poured down the patio steps onto the terrace in a torrent and created a mini lake on the lawn. When the rain finally stopped I took a yardstick outside and measured the contents of the washing up bowl – 4½" had fallen in three hours! (see extras)

I thought we’d got through it pretty well, because we hadn’t heard our cellar pump going and we assumed that the rock-hard clay soil hadn’t yet had time to absorb the moisture. Sadly, we were wrong. My husband has just come to let me know that, although he can now hear our cellar pump working, he has been down to check the cellar and found large water stains on the floor. This is pretty devastating because we have spent a lot of money having two pumps installed but they haven't managed to keep the cellar completely dry. Admittedly this was an unprecedented weather event, and only a small amount of water has come in so far, so hopefully it won’t get any worse. We think that the pumps can’t pump the water out fast enough because the drains around here are too full, so it’s backing up into the cellar. 

Although there’s no more rain forecast for tonight, it’s going to be an uneasy night’s sleep for us.