On Sun, 15 May 2005 20:07:22 +0200, martin wrote:

On Sun, 15 May 2005 19:02:36 +0100, MM wrote:

On Sun, 15 May 2005 17:09:43 +0100, "Mike Lyle"
wrote:

MM wrote:
Around here in the Fens there are dykes everywhere. The amount of
water going for free is incredible. (My water supply is metered.) I
thought, why can't I get one of those old-fashioned stirrup pumps
and
pump some out into a container. But then I thought, ah, there's
sure
to be someone who'll say, you can't do that. What's the law?

It seems you can help yourself to up to 20 cubic metres a day, which
is a lot for a stirrup-pump! After that, you need an abstraction
licence. The following site took ages to load just now, but that may
be a transient condition:
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk...75517/?lang=_e

But the dyke may be some sort of private property, so I'd check. Not
that you could use a stirrup-pump anyhow, but I know what you mean.

Goodness! 20 cubic metres a day! That'd be enough to have a bath as
well occasionally! Crikey. Thanks for that. Very interesting. Now all
I need to do is work out a way of fitting a tank into my car! Although
I did see that the Erde trailers outside Halfords are very cheap. The
smaller one was only £149. You'd get a lot of water in a plastic tank
on the back of one of those. Of course, you'd get about 150 cubic
metres of Anglian water for that kind of money instead, but it's the
idea of getting something for nothing that appeals.

Have you worked out how much 20 cubic metres of water weighs?

I'm not about to extract all 20 in one go! A water butt from B&Q
contains around 200 litres. That would do for starters.

MM