We are finally preparing for our water catchment enhancements we’ve been wanting to do for a long time!
As we’ve been here for just over 2 years, it seems like everything just comes as it comes.
We have all these plans of things we want to get done, but it’s a slow process. Things we want to get done have to get pushed off because of the priority of something else. We’re always excited when something we want is about to take shape.
For our water catchment, that time is now!
Current water catchment
Almost three years ago (April 24, 2022), my oldest grandson and I came up here and installed our first gutter and ran it into an IBC Tote.
We had gutters at our last house and on our last chicken coop, to catch the water for the chickens and the garden. but we needed some here.
And while that’s worked ok here, it’s not even been close to meeting our needs here (nor did we think it would).
For a while now, we’ve had rain barrels just under the eaves of a lot anything that would drop water when it rains. For that matter, we had 5 gallon buckets and just about anything that would hold water. Especially last year when we were trying to keep our garden alive.
Early March, 2025, my uncle who has a gutter company came out and helped me measure and plan what I wanted.
I was able to explain what we wanted and he helped me figure out what we needed so we could get everything ordered.
We even were able to pick the colors, which is a far cry from the white plastic gutters we got from the big box store 3 years ago.
Water catchment plans
Now, it’s time to get more water catchment in place! We plan to put gutters on the chicken coop, and the cover for the wood splitter, and the back of the shed, the screened in porch, and of course, the living room building.
We do plan to put gutters on the bedroom, but we hope to re-roof it later this year, and are holding off till that is done.
But to install the gutters, there’s some prep work that is needed. The splitter shed and the back of the shed were not build to hang gutters on. The corrugated steel had too large of overhangs on them for installing guttering. To remedy that, I had to block them out so we could get the guttering where it needed to be.
For the main cabin, the trim around the windows and on the corner of the building was going to cause problems. So, we needed to do something so the guttering could be mounted properly on it.
Building out the framing to hold the gutters turned out to be an pretty easy project.
However, making the spacer blocks for the cabin turned into an ordeal!
The trim boards around the corners of the building and the double stacked boards around the windows, which I thought were 1″, were not.
I already knew 2×4’s wouldn’t cut it, but for whatever reason, it never crossed my mind that the 2 – 1×4’s was the same thickness as a 2×4.
After trying to do this with 1×4’s and it now working out so well, we ended up switching to 2×4’s (after getting a new saw blade which was desprately needed).
It was crazy what a how much was cut off those 2×4’s!
Enjoy the videos