Why we are bringing ThinTanks to the UK

To understand why we are bringing ThinTanks to the UK, we must go back to late 2019 when my wife and I were house hunting; we wanted to move out of London and into the countryside to raise our two boys.

The photo below was taken on the first day I visited the property that would become our new home. My wife had already visited it once and thought it had real potential.

Great garden but alot of work!

As I walked down the lawn, I remember exactly what I was thinking: “OMG, this is going to be a huge amount of work to get the house and garden into shape”. As we were moving from a 2 bedroom, ex-council flat on the 3rd floor in London, it was a shock to me to be in a garden, and having a garden was on our must-have list, but a garden this size!

Within a few months, we were the proud owners of this property. A few months more, we found ourselves in the COVID lockdowns with a lot of time on our hands, so we got into the garden.

Since owning this property, we have made some significant changes and improvements to our garden, but one problem I was surprised to find was a lack of water to keep the garden green and healthy.

I grew up in New Zealand and believed that the Great British countryside was a “green and pleasant” land given the amount it rains, but I was wrong. 

After all the work we put into the garden over two years, establishing new flower beds and creating a large vegetable plot and a strawberry patch, the last thing I expected was the drought that hit us in 2022.

A green and pleasant land no more!

At the start of that summer, we had two standard water butts, approximately 90 litres each, and they were very soon empty and stayed empty most of the summer.

This was when my search for suitable water tanks started, but I quickly found that the options were limited. Most above-ground tanks either didn’t hold enough water or were ugly. The alternative was to go with an underground tank, which was a bigger job, requiring a digger, extensive plumbing, etc. I didn’t find anything suitable immediately, and time went by with other priorities constantly arising.

Then, in late 2023, while I searched for ideas for our house extension, I came across www.thintanks.com.au and knew I had found what I was looking for.

I reached out to www.thintanks.com.au to find out if they sold their tanks in the UK, and as a seasoned entrepreneur, I added the line, “If you don’t have anyone selling your tanks in the UK, I would be happy to become your distributor”. 

Within a few weeks, I found myself in Germany, meeting with Nautilus Wassersysteme - Regenwasserbehälter - Kleinkläranlagen nautilus.de, who is the European manufacturer of ThinTanks and soon after, getting the UK distributorship up and running.

We are very excited about bringing these innovative water tanks to the UK market, and equally. We are excited about installing three ThinTanks down the side of our house so our garden doesn’t suffer going forward as our summers become hotter and the traditional British hole ban becomes more frequent and longer.