A self-sufficient life-style is one of the big attractions to living on a boat. On our last boat, a sailboat, we rigged a rather simple and effective dam on the deck, near the water inlet for the tank – it worked a treat.

On our barge, Noel and I have much work to do. But, first we want to install solar panels and rig up a rain catcher. The solar panels have already stirred-up our creative minds in the way of being able to raise and lower the ‘fixed’ panels; more on that another day.

I started the rain catcher project a few days ago. I needed to sand and paint the wheelhouse roof, but it was raining, so I turned my attention to the down-pipes, first.

Here you can see that someone has thoughtfully installed down pipes from the roof. We have odd and ends of plastic doohdads to extend the pipe to reach the tank. However, the down-pipes are in need of a rather good scrub.

Here are the weapons for the cleaning job. But I had to figure out how to ‘fix’ the brush onto the plastic (chimney-sweep gear?) pipe.

We found a nut (well noel did)

This nut fits on the male end of my plastic pipe and therefore if I use the nut as a die, and make a thread on the cleaning brush handle, I could screw them together.

I had to file down the end of the cleaning brushes first.

Then slowly ease on the nut (backwards and forwards) and make the thread.

Finally it all came together, the thread idea worked a treat – so far!

Then I had to trim the brush, as it is a bit wide for the pipe

And voila – first stage of the water-catcher complete. 

Stage two coming soon . . .