Water butts are a great way to save water. I have nine, not all connected to down pipes as we have spring water only and the catchment area is mainly from the garden and meadow, but I find that a dunking barrel that is topped up when necessary is a great time saver rather than having to wait for a can to fill. The difficult part is finding good looking butts.
I have just acquired a plastic tank which I have painted with a faux-lead effect. Martin Rodgers has done many amazing paint effects for me, trompe l’oeil, faux Ashlar stone courses on to plain rendered walls, ageing and embellishing terracotta pots. For my black plastic trough, we painted it with Zinsser paint from Brewers (this amazing paint has a repaint interval of about 15 years on exterior surfaces and it sticks to plastic, wood, stone, metal).
To create the lead look we put a little black and white paint on a tray and, with a 2in brush, put some of each beside each other on the tank and brushed them down, mixing as we went.
We repeated this all over the trough until the desired effect was achieved. We wanted to get that slightly streaky look that you see on old weathered lead. The shape of the tank is a bit of a giveaway so, to hide this, I embellished the surface with a couple of different motifs from Peter Evans Studios, applying a faux lead finish to them, too. We have used all sorts of these motifs for exterior mounted sundials, finials on fences, busts in hedges, faux windows and more. They are extremely convincing and very durable.
My tank will be used as a planter, rather than a water butt, and I’ll plant it with a gunnera in spring. As this thrives in moisture-retentive soil I will just punch a couple of holes in the base of the tank to allow the soil to slowly drain and not become anaerobic.
