Chain Reaction

Hi Jack,
What are your plans for X-mas? I’ll be in LA December 24 to the 27th.
D.

Hi D,
Yea, we can possibly get together on the 26th. Call me on x-mas and we’ll set it up.

I’m currently writing a story called ‘Chain Reaction’, about noticing the various directions the dominoes fall with every little, and big, decision we make. Below is an example. See you soon, Jack

On Nov 30, 2006, at 8:56 AM, Humphrey Blackburn wrote:

Hey Jack. I just received a Google alert which referred me to your website. How cool is that! Looks like a good project, I’m looking forward to participating. I am still snowed in here- about 2 feet of snow since saturday. But it is changing today. Talk to you soon. Regards, H

Humphrey Blackburn, President, Blue Future Filters, Inc.
Blackburn & Associates
Sustainable Water Treatment for the World

The future is here, it’s just not widely distributed yet. — William Gibson

Hi Jack,
That’s very great. I would suggest I meet David and Moses first, have the requirements and tanks of their choice. Then, from there, I will be able to furnish you with the costing and the business plan. However, I have to thank you for your kindness and willingness to support this community, and may you be blessed.
Ragards, Fred Mango – Systems Administrator

Hi Jack
Thanks for the story.
Can I forward to a friend in South Africa originally from Kenya?
Happy Thanks giving to you too! See you soon! Many blessings,
lisa

Hi Jack, Wow! What an amazing story! I read the chain of emails and I definitely will keep Bosiango’s water conditions, as well as all the other places lacking water, in prayer. Jack you are an amazing man and if anybody can spearhead this project into a miracle blessing of water abundance for all….it would be you!
All the Best, Molly

Hi J
This is Awesome…Have you been able to make contact with Miguel in Lisbon?
Absolute Abundance is taking such shape, there is still a lot of work involved in setting the foundation, but the soaring of the project is limitless… Once I’ve identified the areas that need the Abundance, the RainCatchers are part of the Absolute… The sustainable… I also have another friend that lives in the Congo, and I would love to introduce the RainCatcher system to him too… Please let me know how things are working with Miguel, as they already have projects happening in Africa…love t (from South Africa)

Hi Jack,
I met David and Moses today. We have taken photos as you requested. They have told me they proposed a 20 tanks project to you, in regards to that they have chosen two 24,000 litres tank and the remaining 18 they need you to choose for them between 10,000 litres and 16,000litres tanks since you are the one who knows the budget you would like to work with.

I would propose a concrete foundation since it’s a long lasting solution. Find below the quotation of their selections.

24,000litres (5217 gal) – $230,000 KSHS $3,200 USD
16,000litres (3478 GAL) – $155,000 KSHS $2,200 USD
10,000litres (2174 Gal) – $95,000 KSHS $1,300 USD

Transportation costs – 2 Tanks per trip @ kshs.45,000 = $640 USD

N/B: Note that the above prices are VAT inclusive apart from the transportation costs.

The transport within Nairobi we usually do for free but since Bosiango is more than 500km (300 miles)away from Nairobi so the cost is involved. For 20 tanks to bosiango this will be 10trips so you can do your calculations right from the above quote depending on how many tanks to be delivered.

Costing of the supply and installation of rain water gutters, it is inclusive of all required fittings, down pipes, unions, rafter brackets, tangit…etc:

Please note, these prices include for supply and fixing in well served districts and locations. If you require them to be sent and fixed to a remote location, you may factor up the prices by 40% to ensure satisfactory supply and installation done to a professional level.

I have also attached some of the photos we took both three of us.Please feel free to ask any query. The tanks will be labeled raincatcher as you requested. Thanking you in advance and looking forward forward for a greater business with you.
Regards, Fred Mango – Systems Administrator

Hi David & Moses & Fred,
I received the pictures from Kentainers. Thank you, they are really helpful. I am now putting the Bosiango story on my site. You can tell others to go to raincatcher.org to read about our project. It The story will be updated as we go along. I am working on some low-cost designs so that you can hopefully begin collecting rainwater soon while we work on raising funds for the larger storage tanks.Go to this link on the Kentainers site: http://www.kentainers.com/kent/downloads/Aquapic.pdf and see pictures of the smaller Aquatanks with the sand + iron ring foundation. I will work with Fred to get some smaller tanks that are easy to move around and don’t need concrete foundations. I will be sending email photos of some simple RainCatchers made with plastic tarps tied to the overhangs of buildings and sloping down into a small tank. The idea is to get some materials to you as soon as possible so you can take advantage of the rainy season that is already under way. The tarps are taken down when it isn’t raining, so they stay clean, then set up again when the next rain starts falling. This is a very clean and inexpensive way to catch rain.

In April of 2002 we purchased a dozen tanks for ‘Water For Children – Africa’. They were the 6000 liter model and we paid $350. US dollars each. Are these still available for this price? Or would the Aquatank be the better way to go. We were able to get five tanks on each truck. At this stage I am just exploring all possibilities to get the best price per gallon. The cost for the 2002 project was .27 US cents per gallon – these quoted above come out to be .55 cents per gallon. I’m open to all suggestions.

I want to set up a RainCatcher account at Kentainers. As I begin fund raising I will have people transfer funds directly to Kentainers. When we have enough for a truck load, then the first shipment is made. In January I will come take pictures and walk and break bread. It is good that Kentainers is in four countries. What we accomplish in Bosiango can then be duplicated in other communities.

If $200 Billion is available worldwide for cosmetics, then there must be plenty for clean drinking water. This is my goal, however long it takes. Water for all.
Yours in friendship,
Jack

RainCatcher Peru, coffee, and Slow Sand Filters

After handling the need for clean, uncontaminated drinking water, the next big issue is livelihood. The RainCatcher Peru project combines both.

There are 130,000 family coffee farms scattered throughout the Peruvian Andes. KC O’Keefe of Jungle-Tech is helping some of these independent growers to raise the quality of their coffee beans and increase the value of the finished product to be sold on the world market. You can read the whole story on jungle-tech.com. KC and I are designing a RainCatcher system to create a supply of clean water for both coffee production and drinking water. We plan to use his solar dryer structures to catch rain and channel the water into storage bags developed by International Development Enterprises. Go to ideorg.org to read about this ‘breakthrough’ in rainwater harvesting. Once at there, click “Tech Gallery”, then “Rainwater Harvesting” to read about and see the water storage bag in use in Bangladesh. With this product we can do several demonstration projects throught the provinces of Peru. Local growers will help build a RainCatcher/Solar Dryer coffee production system and then be able to take the neccessary materials back home to set up their own. These systems are low cost, low tech, non-mechanical, non-electric solutions for rural farming communities. Our aim is to have these operating on a thousand farms by the end of 2006.

The subtitle for Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point reads: “How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”. Our project falls into this category. Getting a thousand growers set up and producing better coffee will lead to information and materials spreading to the rest of the 130,000 farms. If growers are able to improve the quality of their finished beans, the return on their efforts will double, eventually affecting one million people who work on the small, independent coffee farms of Peru.

After catching and storing the rainwater, the next chore is cleaning it for absolute safe drinking. Another key person in this story is a man by the name of Humphrey Blackburn. He and his company, Blue Future Filters, have developed the “Slow Sand Filter”, a filter with no moving parts that requires no maintenance or electricity and provides clean water for decades. It removes all the diseases that spread in undeveloped regions through contaminated water sources. Humphrey just received contracts to ship a thousand filters to the tsunami areas and seven hundred to Iraq. The good news is rainwater can be caught and stored and run through these filters and, if rainwater supplies dry up between rains, any old river or stream water can be passed through the slow sand filter. Now we always have a back-up during long dry spells.