Water? Water is Cheap ....

We attended the 6th annual Lone Star Water Forum, Saturday, October 4, 2014 in Brenham, Texas. The next several blog posts will be reporting about the information we heard at this event. Several eye opening points were made by political speakers currently in office here in Texas. When the dots from the speaking points they were making are connected, they paint a precarious picture for inexpensive water resources for the future of Texas. 

We are going to start with a speaker that came later in the conference, but in our humble opinion was the best speaker of the day. He also has a good point of reference on our local water resources and issues since he was a former mayor of Houston. He talked candidly and openly about our water issues here in Texas and made several valid points for consideration. 

Another 500 Gallons Installed

We always enjoy the privilege our customers allow us by sharing their personal property space with us. We get to go into their yards and land and see what their needs are. We get to bring their 'rainwater vision' to life. 

Below are a few before the installation pictures. These were taken 3 weeks prior to the installation. The tanks are made locally in our state of Texas so we are thrilled to be part of keeping Texans working. The tank the customer chose was a light brown which is a custom color (dark green and black are standard colors that are readily in stock) so we had to order and wait for it to be produced. It was well worth the wait as you will see in pictures further down. 

250 Gallon Poly Rainwater Harvesting System Installation

Over the weekend, we had the privilege of installing a 250 gallon polyethylene rainwater tank for a customer. Below are the before and after photos we took of the installation. 


The 2 pictures below were taken 3 weeks prior to the installation, of the backyard space identified as the best location for the rainwater harvesting system. The determination of tank placement is a collaboration of information taken from our site survey and discussion with the customer of what their precise needs are for the rainwater being harvested. This process allows for the most efficient placement for water usage. 

Staggering Amount of Water

Recently we were asked to measure for a local College Station apartment complex for the rainwater harvesting potential. We knew there would be plenty of roof space for harvesting but the sheer amount of water that can be collected was mind blowing, even for us since we work with these numbers every day. 

If we collect from every surface in this apartment complex, one inch of rain harvests 53,181 gallons of rainwater. Unfortunately it will not be feasible to capture from every surface since we have limited space for tanks to hold the water. On average (taken from data from the past 10 years) we have had 35 inches of rain annually in College Station, Texas. This means that we could capture 1.8 million gallons of water from this one apartment complex alone in town. 

Last Week's Rainfall Put Small Dent in Drought Conditions for the Brazos Valley

Recent rainfall in the Brazos Valley has put a small dent in the drought conditions. The graphic below shows the rainfall totals on May 13th for 24 hours as shown on KBTX.com website.

Given these rainfall totals, here is how much rainwater you could have captured, for use during the drier months from this rainfall event, if you have a 1500 sq foot surface to capture from:

Giant Step for Water Conservation

Today I happened across an article that made me proud to be a Texan. With drought issues being more and more prevalent, every drop of water that can be conserved should be conserved. It makes sense to find ways to not only make it easier for water to be conserved but also save people money when they do opt to conserve. 

Below is the link to the article I came across but as a brief synopsis, the City of San Marcos, Texas is putting a rebate in place for Rainwater Harvesting system installation of up to $5000 for homeowners and up to $20,000 (conditions apply) for commercial installations. This is a giant leap that I hope for all of our sakes, especially our children, that other Texas cities decide to implement in some type of manner to encourage water conservation. 

You are welcome to read this article for yourself here. 

As always, comments and/or questions are always relevant and welcome. 

RainDrop Harvesting Solutions, LLC
www.RainDropSavers.com

Rolling Rain - Rainwater Harvesting Mobile Demo

As part of our education efforts and giving back to the community, we wanted to come up with an interactive way to teach about Rainwater Harvesting. We wanted something fun and easy to transport both for booths and events as well as taking to schools for education. 

We went through  many different ideas and designs, including large and small scale before settling on our final design that is shown below. We even considered a doll house model before deciding that would not really meet all the criteria we wanted to accomplish.