Splitter box

I'm making myself a splitter box!

I finally managed to find something with a nice flat lip to make the outlets in the bottom of the box. Now that I've found these I'm thinking one of these might have made a better outlet for the bottom of my Big Bucket!

This is actually an end stop for some sort of hose (found in the plumbing section of Bunnings). To make it usable I had to drill a fat hole through the end of it, but the good thing is that one can drill the hole as fat or as narrow as you need, depending on what flow rate you want coming out of the splitter box. The end stops come in various diameters - I've seen 20mm, 25mm, and 32mm. I'm using the 25mm ones because the shank is the perfect diameter to give a snug fit inside the end part of the ribbed greywater hose I'm attaching. (I'll put a clamp around it anyway, just in case.)

The box itself is a 40L plastic storage crate ($10). I cut fat holes in the bottom with a spade bit. Here is the splitter box under construction - just two more end stops left to drill and insert.

I put a line of gutter silicon between the lip of each end stop and the inside floor of the box to make a watertight seal. An adhesive like Liquid Nails might give a sturdier bond, but I'll see how the silicon bears up.  The bottom of the completed splitter box is like this.

Obviously this splitter box will need to sit on some sort of frame with gaps to accommodate the outlets and the greywater hoses that attach to them, but I already have something suitable that I was using for something else. I still need to find some more outlet hoses for it though.

Of course a splitter box does not necessarily need to be this high. I am using this one to feed water through greywater hoses to the surrounding raised planter boxes, but if you are using a splitter box to channel water to ground-level trenches, for example, it will only need to be a little higher than the trenches and high enough to leave room for the outlet hoses.

Right now its too wet and wintry to be using greywater in the garden, so this splitter box has not had a trial run yet. Next time we have a dry spell, I'll put it through its paces and tell you how it goes.