Sunday, November 12, 2006
Rainwater in Texas
In Each Life, Some Rain Must Fall. Why Not Bottle It?
New York Times - January 8, 2004
By: Nora Krug
Dripping Springs, Texas
Ever tasted a raindrop and wondered, Why doesn't someone bottle this stuff? Well, someone has and called it, aptly, Rain Water. Rain Water, the product, comes from Dripping Springs, where it is collected and bottled by Richard Heinichen, a 57-year-old former blacksmith. He fills about 1,500 bottles a day with the "cloud juice" that falls on Rain Water headquarters, wich he calls Tank Town. Mr. Heinichen (pronounced like the beer) said he sold about 170,000 16-ounce bottles last year - at about $1 each - and has more than a quarter-million gallons of water in storage.
For more stories go to rainwater.org
Besause Texas gets an average 2" of rain per every month of the year, it has become the leader in rainwater harvesting in the US. The following is one family's rain catching story.
HOMEOWNERS TAP CLOUDS FOR THEIR WATER NEEDS
Tracy Hobson Lehmann
Express-News Home & Garden Editor
Like everyone these days, John Kight is looking for rain. Like the rest of us, he wants relief from the miserable heat and drought. But Kight has another interest, perhaps a more significant one: He made a vow to his wife. "He promised me I would always have water," says Mary Evelyn Kight.
Unlike most folks, the Kights rely solely on rain for their water needs. Every drop of water for drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning and lawn irrigation at their house north of Boerne comes via the clouds. And even with the dry spell that's lingered since December 2004, the Kights aren't concerned about being parched.
The big green tanks out back still hold about 21,000 gallons of water, roughly two-thirds of the 30,000-gallon capacity, captured from rooftop runoff. Even without a drop of rain, Kight figures that amount would keep the faucets flowing for the better part of a year without any lawn watering. "With 2 to 3 inches of rain, we'll be full again," he says.
Kight, 71, designed and installed the rainwater collection system for the hilltop home he and Mary Evelyn moved into in August 2002. They lived in the finished-out garage for a year as their 3,500-square-foot house was being built. All the while, they've relied on rain, with no backup water supply. In planning the system, the retired engineer pored over climate data and studied his household water use. His meticulous records show daily water use indoors of a fairly steady 70 gallons per day. Factor in last year's landscape watering, and the number more than doubles to an annualized average of 146 gallons a day.
Kight looked at annual rainfall in Boerne, which averages about 36 inches a year, and at the drought of record — in the 1950s — in which there was no rain for 100 days. From his standing-seam metal roof, which covers 6,400 square feet, he can collect 4,000 gallons of water from every inch of rain. Crunching all those numbers, and padding the days without rain to 120, he arrived at the 30,000-gallon storage capacity. "I always want to be a little bit conservative," he says. Now he's adding three 1,550-gallon tanks because, he says, Mary Evelyn sees water being lost in heavy rains.
Like the Kights, more people in the Hill Country are going back to the water-supply systems of our forefathers. Weighing the cost — and risk — of drilling a well against the cost of a rainwater-harvesting system was a factor for Kight. "The aquifers in the Hill Country definitely have sweet spots, but there's a risk of not getting water," says Chris Brown, a San Antonio-based water conservation consultant and principal co-author of the third edition of the "Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting," a publication of the Texas Water Development Board. Unlike previous versions of the manual, which focused mainly on using rainwater collection for landscape watering, the updated manual, released in spring 2005, devotes more attention to capturing potable water.
Brown estimates the cost of a whole-house rainwater collection system around $15,000, in line with what Kight spent on his system. Prices vary according to the size and material of the cisterns. At Bohnert Lumber Co. in Comfort, a 2,500-gallon polypropylene tank costs $800, says Steve Bohnert. Eight of the tanks would collect 20,000 gallons of water at $6,400. "A well is going to cost you three times that amount now," Bohnert says. Wood and metal tanks cost more, but Bohnert says he has seen homeowners disguise poly tanks by wrapping them with cedar stays or galvanized metal.
Polyethylene tanks that hold 3,000 gallons cost $1,000 each at Golden Eagle Landscape in Ingram, a company that sells equipment and installs rainwater-harvesting systems. The biggest cost variable in installation is in building a pad for the tanks, says landscape designer Katherine Crawford. Digging into a hillside, building a retaining wall and backfilling it will drive up the cost, she notes. Required filters don't add significantly to the cost, but homeowners do need to have sufficient rooftop areas, gutters and downspouts.
Some rainwater harvesters elect to build "rain barns," shedlike structures that conceal tanks and provide collection area for rain runoff. When Sandy and Raúl Peña explored water options for their property near Center Point nie years ago, they got a $12,000 estimate for a well. Like the Kights, they opted for rainwater collection and have installed four 3,000-gallon cisterns in the basement of the home they are building. "It makes so much sense to use the rain," says Sandy Peña. "It's free, and we're not punching another hole in the aquifer." The Peñas' tanks filled to their 12,000-gallon capacity with 10 inches of rain more than a year ago, and the Peñas have used only small amounts of the water in mixing mortar for the house. Now, they rely on tanks that capture 6,500 gallons of water from their workshop and the 12-by-16-foot cabin they live in.
Both the Peñas and the Kights note the high quality of their water. "By the time we actually drink our water, it's almost the quality of water used for kidney dialysis," says Sandy Peña, who resigned from her job as administrator of the department of human and molecular genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston when she and her husband moved to western Kerr County in 1996. Raúl Peña retired as a software developer for Shell Oil and has designed the rainwater-collection systems they use
"When friends come over, the first thing they want to do is have a drink of our water," she says.
Mary Evelyn Kight says they didn't use water from their system until it was analyzed in Kerrville. Now, John Kight refers to records from twice-a-year testing. The water is soft — but a different soft, because soap rinses off easily, the Kights note — and it measures 5 on total dissolved solids. Environmental Protection Agency standards cap total dissolved solids at 1,000 in public water supplies.
"That's about as close to nothing as you're going to get," says John Kight.
In each of the systems, water from gutters passes first through a roof washer that filters out dust, leaves, blooms and bird droppings. Kight uses a sock filter made of double-weave shade cloth primarily to catch oak blooms. "You do not want organic material in the storage tanks," he says. "It sours the water." From the cisterns, the Kights' potable water goes through a series of three filters. A 5-micron cloth filter catches the first particles, then the water passes through a 3-micron charcoal filter. "Remember, a hair is 30 microns," Kight notes.
From there, it goes through a UV filter to zap any bacteria. The result is crystal-clear water that doesn't leave sediment on fixtures — all thanks to the rain.
"All you have to do is collect enough water in rainy times to get you through about three months without rain," Sandy Peña says. "We have a year's supply of water."
Brown notes a weather adage that applies to the Hill Country: "Our climate can be adequately described as drought punctuated by flood." He adds, "Rain may come infrequently in Central Texas, but it does come."
Still, rainwater harvesters such as the Peñas and Kights must use water frugally.
"If you're going to use rainwater, you have to buy into the conservation lifestyle," says Brown.
The Kights have a front-loading washer, which uses about 16 gallons per load compared with more than 40 gallons for a standard top-loading model. Still, notes Mary Evelyn Kight with a smile, "he lets me take one long shower a week."
They also used drought-tolerant Sahara Bermuda grass in their landscape and put down about 8 inches of topsoil over the solid rock so the grass could establish a deeper root system. Mary Evelyn Kight irrigates only the small front yard, and only when it's stressed. The grass is deep green in the front, and she's run the sprinklers only twice this year. She will water more frequently — and take two long showers a week — when the new tanks are filled.
And her husband is keeping his promise of a lasting water supply.
tlehmann@express-news.net
Household Water Use
A three-person household would use about 99 gallons of water a day indoors and 45 outdoors. The daily rundown and the household total:
Faucets: 5 minutes per person, 1.5 gallons a minute. Total: 22.5 gallons.
Showers: 5 minutes per person, 2 gallons a minute. Total: 30 gallons.
Toilets: 6 flushes per person, 2 gallons per flush. Total: 36 gallons.
Washing machine: 3 loads per week, 16 gallons per load. Total: 48 gallons a week. (That's based on a front-loading washing machine; top-loading machines use about 40 gallons per load.)
Dishwasher: 4 loads per week, 8 gallons per load. Total: 32 gallons a week.
Source: John Kight
American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association
www.arcsa-usa.org
Group founded in Austin in 1994 to promote rainwater catchment in the U.S. Site includes links to suppliers of materials for rainwater collection systems.
Texas Cooperative Extension
rainwaterharvesting.tamu.edu
Site explains the development of a system to collect rainwater for irrigating the landscape.
New York Times - January 8, 2004
By: Nora Krug
Dripping Springs, Texas
Ever tasted a raindrop and wondered, Why doesn't someone bottle this stuff? Well, someone has and called it, aptly, Rain Water. Rain Water, the product, comes from Dripping Springs, where it is collected and bottled by Richard Heinichen, a 57-year-old former blacksmith. He fills about 1,500 bottles a day with the "cloud juice" that falls on Rain Water headquarters, wich he calls Tank Town. Mr. Heinichen (pronounced like the beer) said he sold about 170,000 16-ounce bottles last year - at about $1 each - and has more than a quarter-million gallons of water in storage.
For more stories go to rainwater.org
Besause Texas gets an average 2" of rain per every month of the year, it has become the leader in rainwater harvesting in the US. The following is one family's rain catching story.
HOMEOWNERS TAP CLOUDS FOR THEIR WATER NEEDS
Tracy Hobson Lehmann
Express-News Home & Garden Editor
Like everyone these days, John Kight is looking for rain. Like the rest of us, he wants relief from the miserable heat and drought. But Kight has another interest, perhaps a more significant one: He made a vow to his wife. "He promised me I would always have water," says Mary Evelyn Kight.
Unlike most folks, the Kights rely solely on rain for their water needs. Every drop of water for drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning and lawn irrigation at their house north of Boerne comes via the clouds. And even with the dry spell that's lingered since December 2004, the Kights aren't concerned about being parched.
The big green tanks out back still hold about 21,000 gallons of water, roughly two-thirds of the 30,000-gallon capacity, captured from rooftop runoff. Even without a drop of rain, Kight figures that amount would keep the faucets flowing for the better part of a year without any lawn watering. "With 2 to 3 inches of rain, we'll be full again," he says.
Kight, 71, designed and installed the rainwater collection system for the hilltop home he and Mary Evelyn moved into in August 2002. They lived in the finished-out garage for a year as their 3,500-square-foot house was being built. All the while, they've relied on rain, with no backup water supply. In planning the system, the retired engineer pored over climate data and studied his household water use. His meticulous records show daily water use indoors of a fairly steady 70 gallons per day. Factor in last year's landscape watering, and the number more than doubles to an annualized average of 146 gallons a day.
Kight looked at annual rainfall in Boerne, which averages about 36 inches a year, and at the drought of record — in the 1950s — in which there was no rain for 100 days. From his standing-seam metal roof, which covers 6,400 square feet, he can collect 4,000 gallons of water from every inch of rain. Crunching all those numbers, and padding the days without rain to 120, he arrived at the 30,000-gallon storage capacity. "I always want to be a little bit conservative," he says. Now he's adding three 1,550-gallon tanks because, he says, Mary Evelyn sees water being lost in heavy rains.
Like the Kights, more people in the Hill Country are going back to the water-supply systems of our forefathers. Weighing the cost — and risk — of drilling a well against the cost of a rainwater-harvesting system was a factor for Kight. "The aquifers in the Hill Country definitely have sweet spots, but there's a risk of not getting water," says Chris Brown, a San Antonio-based water conservation consultant and principal co-author of the third edition of the "Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting," a publication of the Texas Water Development Board. Unlike previous versions of the manual, which focused mainly on using rainwater collection for landscape watering, the updated manual, released in spring 2005, devotes more attention to capturing potable water.
Brown estimates the cost of a whole-house rainwater collection system around $15,000, in line with what Kight spent on his system. Prices vary according to the size and material of the cisterns. At Bohnert Lumber Co. in Comfort, a 2,500-gallon polypropylene tank costs $800, says Steve Bohnert. Eight of the tanks would collect 20,000 gallons of water at $6,400. "A well is going to cost you three times that amount now," Bohnert says. Wood and metal tanks cost more, but Bohnert says he has seen homeowners disguise poly tanks by wrapping them with cedar stays or galvanized metal.
Polyethylene tanks that hold 3,000 gallons cost $1,000 each at Golden Eagle Landscape in Ingram, a company that sells equipment and installs rainwater-harvesting systems. The biggest cost variable in installation is in building a pad for the tanks, says landscape designer Katherine Crawford. Digging into a hillside, building a retaining wall and backfilling it will drive up the cost, she notes. Required filters don't add significantly to the cost, but homeowners do need to have sufficient rooftop areas, gutters and downspouts.
Some rainwater harvesters elect to build "rain barns," shedlike structures that conceal tanks and provide collection area for rain runoff. When Sandy and Raúl Peña explored water options for their property near Center Point nie years ago, they got a $12,000 estimate for a well. Like the Kights, they opted for rainwater collection and have installed four 3,000-gallon cisterns in the basement of the home they are building. "It makes so much sense to use the rain," says Sandy Peña. "It's free, and we're not punching another hole in the aquifer." The Peñas' tanks filled to their 12,000-gallon capacity with 10 inches of rain more than a year ago, and the Peñas have used only small amounts of the water in mixing mortar for the house. Now, they rely on tanks that capture 6,500 gallons of water from their workshop and the 12-by-16-foot cabin they live in.
Both the Peñas and the Kights note the high quality of their water. "By the time we actually drink our water, it's almost the quality of water used for kidney dialysis," says Sandy Peña, who resigned from her job as administrator of the department of human and molecular genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston when she and her husband moved to western Kerr County in 1996. Raúl Peña retired as a software developer for Shell Oil and has designed the rainwater-collection systems they use
"When friends come over, the first thing they want to do is have a drink of our water," she says.
Mary Evelyn Kight says they didn't use water from their system until it was analyzed in Kerrville. Now, John Kight refers to records from twice-a-year testing. The water is soft — but a different soft, because soap rinses off easily, the Kights note — and it measures 5 on total dissolved solids. Environmental Protection Agency standards cap total dissolved solids at 1,000 in public water supplies.
"That's about as close to nothing as you're going to get," says John Kight.
In each of the systems, water from gutters passes first through a roof washer that filters out dust, leaves, blooms and bird droppings. Kight uses a sock filter made of double-weave shade cloth primarily to catch oak blooms. "You do not want organic material in the storage tanks," he says. "It sours the water." From the cisterns, the Kights' potable water goes through a series of three filters. A 5-micron cloth filter catches the first particles, then the water passes through a 3-micron charcoal filter. "Remember, a hair is 30 microns," Kight notes.
From there, it goes through a UV filter to zap any bacteria. The result is crystal-clear water that doesn't leave sediment on fixtures — all thanks to the rain.
"All you have to do is collect enough water in rainy times to get you through about three months without rain," Sandy Peña says. "We have a year's supply of water."
Brown notes a weather adage that applies to the Hill Country: "Our climate can be adequately described as drought punctuated by flood." He adds, "Rain may come infrequently in Central Texas, but it does come."
Still, rainwater harvesters such as the Peñas and Kights must use water frugally.
"If you're going to use rainwater, you have to buy into the conservation lifestyle," says Brown.
The Kights have a front-loading washer, which uses about 16 gallons per load compared with more than 40 gallons for a standard top-loading model. Still, notes Mary Evelyn Kight with a smile, "he lets me take one long shower a week."
They also used drought-tolerant Sahara Bermuda grass in their landscape and put down about 8 inches of topsoil over the solid rock so the grass could establish a deeper root system. Mary Evelyn Kight irrigates only the small front yard, and only when it's stressed. The grass is deep green in the front, and she's run the sprinklers only twice this year. She will water more frequently — and take two long showers a week — when the new tanks are filled.
And her husband is keeping his promise of a lasting water supply.
tlehmann@express-news.net
Household Water Use
A three-person household would use about 99 gallons of water a day indoors and 45 outdoors. The daily rundown and the household total:
Faucets: 5 minutes per person, 1.5 gallons a minute. Total: 22.5 gallons.
Showers: 5 minutes per person, 2 gallons a minute. Total: 30 gallons.
Toilets: 6 flushes per person, 2 gallons per flush. Total: 36 gallons.
Washing machine: 3 loads per week, 16 gallons per load. Total: 48 gallons a week. (That's based on a front-loading washing machine; top-loading machines use about 40 gallons per load.)
Dishwasher: 4 loads per week, 8 gallons per load. Total: 32 gallons a week.
Source: John Kight
American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association
www.arcsa-usa.org
Group founded in Austin in 1994 to promote rainwater catchment in the U.S. Site includes links to suppliers of materials for rainwater collection systems.
Texas Cooperative Extension
rainwaterharvesting.tamu.edu
Site explains the development of a system to collect rainwater for irrigating the landscape.
