Ah, the downpour of water, comes and goes, then we have the dry season for months on end. Then it comes and stays for months, so why not have a little more control and use it before it runs down the gully and side of the road making little rivulets of mud and washing away my land square inch by inch.
After all at that rate, I will lose a hectare in 30,000 years......maybe, hell I don't know, but I do know that it is a shame to not catch the water and use it instead of using our drinking water for irrigation.
I picked this book up last time we were passing through Tucson, it is a set, and has some stellar ideas and plans and projects for catching the rain.
Our location is a interesting one since we are on top of a mountain, the town is 6 to 7 km below us. Often , actually quite often I will be in town looking at a dark cloud in the area of the mountain while the town drenched in sunshine. As I crest the hill I am met with a downpour which lasts while the passing pillow of water moves further south or west, never moving towards Patzcuaro.
We have a unique micro climate and although I am sure that the rain precipitation evens out in the long run, I want to harness some drops , at least for a mini project.
We have a canyon which centuries ago probably was formed by either water or an shift of the Pacific plate rubbing it's nose to some Mayan god.
Anyway my though was to damn up one end of a section, line it with some plastic and divert our gutter downspouts into the new chasm.
That would be the most cost effective way to save the water. I also thought of building a small pond, but that seems like a lot of work and continual maintenance. A cistern of any consequence would be quite expensive as would a series of Rotoplast tanks.
With as much water as is provided from the sky it would be nice to save it and as the book points out there are many ways to filter and even use it for great tasting drinking water.
Places in other lands have done this for years, living solely on the fluid derived from the sky. I see people purchasing water in big bottles and am thankful that our normal supply is although a little expensive and mostly reliable, fit for drinking straight from the tap.
If you have a problem and purchase water you might look into "Water Harvesting" It may be cost effective and or at least usable for irrigation purposes.
I love informational books such as this, had I considered the topic while we were building the house, I would have put a cistern underneath the house. I have seen many such installations but it never occurred to me to do it , since water was coming out of a hose so effortlessly at the time.
We did have to run 2500 meters of pipe though.......
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The little town I grew up in sat on a layer of salt-no ground water of any use to anyone. The area gets about 45 inches of rain a year. They use big plastic tanks to store the water that runs off the roofs, in the ground, on top of the ground, lots of tanks. I have seen set ups where they store run off in 55 gallon plastic barrels set up in series. People with big families still had to buy water but the small house holds were pretty much off the grid as far as water went.
Water is going to the next crisis. Anything we can do to save and not waste it will be worth it's weight in gold...after all you can't live without it, so we better start figuring out how now to waste it! Now if I can get more solar electric panels and some for the water heater....
I was reading earlier today or later yesterday (I don't know where—somewhere on this Internet thang—) that it's now legal for private Colorado citizens to harvest raindrops.
Saludos,
Don Cuevas
Just be careful at building a dam-like structure. They have a tendency to fail. And water can be very angry when it gets all mobbed up.
Good luck with your project - interested in hearing about the results ...
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