As a result of donated funds, RainCatchers are now bringing clean water to four schools in remote regions of Western Kenya. With gratitude I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Mr. Shigeo Ohmori and Mr. Kokichi Nakata from the Youth Summit for the Environment — Kobe, Japan – and Mr. Haysbert for donating time, talent & resources to this cause.

Because of Mr. Ohmori’s, Mr. Nakata’s and Mr. Haysbert’s sponsorship of our rainwater harvesting projects in Africa, thousands of students are now benefiting from having their own source of clean drinking water for years to come. Thank you, Jack Rose

August, 2009 – Reporter Jarrod Holbrook and RainCatcher Fred Mango document the installation of rainwater harvesting systems on rural schools across Kenya.

CREDITS

the RainCatcher story

narration – Dennis Haysbert . . . . . . . .cinematography – Jarrod Holbrook

schools in Kenya – Fred Mango . . . . . . . . . . . .music - Wabake by  Samite

editing – Zak Hudson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sound  - Tom Evoniuk

writer + stills  -  Jack Rose

In any situation, anywhere around the world, clean, safe drinking water is always at hand – once you have the right tools:  1 – a ‘Just Water’ Ceramic Drip filter . . .  2 – two stackable buckets with lids . . .  3 – a sharp knife or drill . . .  4 – and one tap.      Three minute video:

For detailed step-by-step instructions:

www.raincatcher.org/2009/05/water-filter-instructions

To carry a few of these in your luggage to anywhere and everywhere, contact   jack@raincatcher.org

From YouTube:     Rain Water

The film brings a simple message: rainwater belongs to each of us – why don’t we collect and share it?

Website mentioned at end of video: Rainwaterharvesting.org.

Instructions: Find two stackable buckets, with two lids.

Step 1 – Drilling: Drill or cut a 5/8″ hole in the bottom of the upper bucket. Drill or cut another hole on the side of the lower bucket, close to the bottom. Drill or cut a final hole in the middle of one of the lids. Three holes total will need to be made.

Step 2 – Tap Assembly: Place rubber washer on the tap and guide it through hole on side of lower bucket. Place second washer on the tap threads inside the bucket and screw on the wing nut snugly, but don’t over tighten.

Step 3 – Filter Assembly: Place rubber washer on the threads of the ceramic filter. Place the filter inside the upper bucket and guide the threads through the hole in the bottom. Place second washer on the threads and and screw on the wing nut snugly, but don’t over tighten.

Step 4 – Final Assembly: Place the lid with the hole in the center on top of the lower bucket (the one with the tap). Next place the upper bucket on top of the lower bucket, and guide the filter nozzle through the hole in the lid on the lower bucket.

Step 5 – Just Add Water: Fill the upper bucket with water from the cleanest source available: Rainwater, well-water, river, stream or pond.

The first five gallons will take a few hours to slowly filter down into the lower bucket. An endless supply of clean, safe drinking water is now available. Enjoy. As the clean water level goes down, keep adding water to the top bucket. this way your supply will never run out.

Included with each filter is a cotton pre-filter sock that fits over the ceramic filter if the source water is muddy.  See more stories and instructions in the ‘Water Filter’ category and in the ‘Links’ column titled ‘Just Water’ Filters.

Noe Valley spec house touts conservation, including rain catchment system

Susan Fornoff, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, April 22, 2006

Even before its buyers move in, a new Noe Valley home touted by its builders as “the greenest house in San Francisco” is bringing down some walls — in San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection, that is.

The 2,600-square-foot house on Clipper Street showcases every high-end Earth-friendly feature that Lorax Development partners Mike Kerwin, Joel Micucci and Pat Loughran could find a way to incorporate, including the city’s first approved rooftop rain catchment system.

The system, by Mount Shasta’s Wonderwater Inc., collects an average of 18,000 to 20,000 gallons of annual rainfall, cleans it and stores it in tanks below the house to be used to flush toilets, wash clothes and water gardens.

Wonderwater president and founder Dylan Coleman notes that his rain harvesting systems perfect a practice that is 3,000 years old, but, he said, “There hasn’t exactly been a flood of activity,” in part because city permit boards don’t know what to make of it.

On a rainy day in San Francisco, he said, 465 million gallons of rain goes into city sewers, to be treated as sewage — a practice Coleman says is “stupid, and it’s a waste of energy.”

“I see a day in San Francisco when you can’t get a permit unless you collect a certain amount of water, and when you are charged for excess runoff,” Coleman said. “But right now there’s some real political stuff out there, and it might just go case by case until we get things going.”

Visit SF Gate to read the complete article.

By Nora Krug
New York Times – January 8, 2004

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 about Rain Water and Tank Town, visit rainwater.org.

Because 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
San Antonio 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 nine 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.

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 (ARCSA) — A 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 — This website explains the development of a system to collect rainwater for irrigating the landscape.

There are many ways to catch the rain. Any existing structure (house, school, medical clinic, factory, office building, train station, market, etc.) when retrofitted with rain gutters, plastic tarps on rooftops, and rain barrels, becomes a RainCatcher. In this way, each structure can be converted into a rainwater factory, ready to provide thousands of gallons of clean drinking water. Ordinary citizens become rain farmers.

Along with turning existing buildings into RainCatchers, free standing tent-like structures can be erected wherever a new source of drinking water is needed. The following description illustrates how to build a RainCatcher. Though there are countless ways to catch rain, one central theme applies to all models: Set up a roof structure for rain to fall on, then channel the water into containers for storage.

Materials Needed :

• tent poles
• plenty of rope
• tent stakes (steel or wood spikes)
• tent covering (tarps made from local materials)
• rolls of clear plastic sheeting
• water storage tanks (plastic containers suitable for storing drinking water- from 50 to 1,500 gallons)
• chlorine and/or iodine tablets (if necessary)

Many RainCatcher tents can be set up at key locations around a village or town. For however long the rainy season lasts, these simple rain water collection plants catch and store thousands of gallons of the purest drinking water available on the planet. With a consistent, reusable supply of storage containers, enough water can be caught and stored to last a community from one rainy season to the next. In full, opaque containers, water can be stored for an entire dry season. Chlorine and iodine tablets are readily available to add to any barrels that my have become contaminated by airborne/dust-borne bacteria.

This description is for a square shaped RainCatcher tent. Through experimentation, any shape or size can be adapted to the requirements of site and use. For example, if a single 1,000 gal water tank is available, tarps can be attached to the top of the tank and rise outward and upward to perimeter poles, creating a big funnel to channel rainfall into the single storage tank. Another example : set up safari-type canopies and place rain barrels around the edges.With any RainCatcher, the bigger the tent surface area, the faster the storage containers will be filled.

The only limit to how much rain water can be collected and stored is how many tent structures can be erected and how many storage containers can be rounded up.

Have you ever caught and tasted rainwater? I don’t know why, but every time the rain comes I set up a primitive catchment system and start drinking rainwater. It’s an elixir. In a single storm I extend my cup and receive more than I could drink in a lifetime. Uncountable gallons of fresh drinking water are bestowed upon us daily.

Over the past few years, while catching and drinking rainwater, I have figured out how the increasing billions who go thirsty can also catch, store and enjoy clean drinking water year ’round.