From our days of sailing we were pretty aware of the ease and practicality of collecting rain for our needs. On some islands where the only water comes from desalination systems water can be nearly as expensive as diesel fuel.

When we moved to Luna Azul we installed a rain collection system and were amazed, in an area that only gets 17 inches of annual rainfall, how much of our needs could be met from the rain.

In case you have never calculated how much water you are letting get away, here is the simple formula. I will use our 30 ft by 30 ft barn as an example. Converting ft to inches= 360″x360″=129,600 sq inches. So if it rains for one hour at 1″/hr you have 129, 600 cu inches divided by 231 cu in / gallon = 561 gallons of water. In one hour!!!

Probably the hardest thing to comprehend how many gallons a few square feet of roof can gather.   Grab a 12 ” ruler.  Turn it left and right, up and down and them away from you. There’s your cubic ft.   Can you imagine being able to put 7.5 one gallon gas cans in that space?  Well you absolutely can.  Warning:  If you try this at home,  be careful cutting that eighth gas can in half   This may seem like a tedious exercise but it helps you understand how much rain you can gather from even a small roof.

We used some food grade 50 gallon drums to collect the water  to supplement the gray water system in the garden.   In the summer we watered almost every day and it seemed like it hardly ever rained but we always had water for the garden. It’s magic.

On a lighter note, there is much conversation and speculation on the future scarcity and extreme cost of water. Many of last decades oil speculators are now buying up water rights. This may be a good time to start incorporating rain collection into your building plans and projects.

Rain water may end up being more than just something Grandma catches to wash her hair.

There are some tricks for storage and for not collecting dust and dirt.  I would be more than happy to answer any questions.

“It rained 17 inches in these parts last year and I was here the day it rained.”

The picture was taken on “The Day.” Our gray water system at Luna Azul did a very nice job of keeping a portion of the garden moist. We designed it to support three rows of vegetables like tomatoes, lettuce and peppers. It is recommended that gray water not be used for plants, like turnips, carrots or potatoes that produce the food in direct contact with the water. The water from the kitchen sink(no garbage disposal), lavatory, shower and washing machine went into the gray water system.

Beginning at the house you can see where the system comes together and goes underground. We used 2″ schedule 4o pvc and at each fixture included a vent. The diagonal pipe is coming over from the washing machine and the red handle you see is on a ball valve to a garden hose connection which would allow you to have drainage if the main system was not flowing. We never had to use it but you can imagine that if the conditions in the first photo persisted, the system in the garden might fill up and without the emergency valve you would be in a fix. From the house we ran a 4″ PVC pipe at a 1/4″/ft slope (2%) to a special fitting that allows you to switch from regular PVC pipe to french drain or perforated PVC pipe. We wrapped this quite tightly with filter fabric (geotextile fabric) designed to allow water to flow out of the pipes but not let dirt or critters into the system. It is not good to look down into the drain and have who-knows-what looking back at you. We placed the pipe on concrete blocks to create more of a reservoir. When we were through we just carefully backfilled the same dirt that we had dug out. If there is too much clay in the dirt I would recommend that you mix some sand in with it so the water will disperse through the soil. Besides if there is no sand in the soil the lettuce is not nearly as crunchy.

Ya gotta have some minerals in your diet, right! So that was our gray water system. It worked like a charm. Between it and our rain water collection system (later) y wait really cut down on the amount of watering we had to do. Water is pretty precious in those parts and it seemed a shame to waste any. You never know how long you are going to have to wait for another “That Day”. And no, the tomatoes did not taste like Tide or Zest either. If you have any questions feel free to ask. ~ Jim

Our little neighborhood is called Hometown and last year was our first 4th. Everyone decorated the kids and the dogs and themselves and walked – not drove – from their homes to the parade gathering area by the lake. We laughed and congratulated each other on decorating genius and sense of humor.
Once most everyone had shown up, a very casual parade to the park began. Nothing too fancy, no fireworks, no crowd control, no jostling, no conspicuous beer bash, just families and neighbors celebrating freedom. Just enough of all of that sentiment to bring the goose bumps and ear-to-ear grins.

I mentioned before that we had lived in a rural area in Southwest Texas. Every 4th there is a celebration in the park. Maybe 500 people come into town from tending goats and mending fences and their everyday solitary lives to join together as neighbors and Americans. It was our good luck that some of them brought their fiddlles, guitars, banjos and even a dobro. Nothing rehearsed or orchestrated or electric,  just sweet acoustic music to accompany the cicadas in the big Oak and Mesquite trees that made gathering in July possible.

One Fourth, 18 years ago, Karen and I had the good luck to end up in Concord Mass., where the Revolutionary War began.   Being one of the most  significant American towns on the road to independence, it was interesting to see what form of celebration had evolved in the birthplace of this experiment in Freedom.  Here we were in the company of direct descendants of the heroes who shed their blood for this freedom. How would their values show on Independence Day.

This year we will leave our car parked and our family will walk with our neighbors in a celebration of all that it means to be free Americans.

Red, White, Blue and Green.

This picture of me is included to show an unfortunately unforgettable example just how practical the strategies described in future posts to this column will be.  Real Problem ~ Solution stuff. “P ~ S”

In this case, the problem  was my fear of Sharks.  My job as chief hunter (Karen was chief gatherer) on our Sailing expedition forced me into the water almost daily.   My real instinct was to follow the plan endorsed by one of our cruising companions who claimed he had a deal with sharks, “If the sharks would agree to stay out of the Pubs he would promise to stay out of the water.”

Having seen many tearful interviews in which the victims, or their next of kin,  stated that the shark must have mistaken them, in their black wet suit, for a Harbor Seal or Walrus, I resolved to make sure that I did not – by proportion or color – resemble any standard selection on  “The Bull Shark Catch-of-the Day Menu.”

“P ~ S”.   “Problem ~ Solution”  Still alive and not so much as a close call.

In our sailing days we fitted out both of our boats with wind power and solar power and the deep cycle batteries to store all that we generated.  In future posts we will discuss those systems and power conservation strategies .  We even had a wind powered self-steering system to drive for us on long passages.

After our sailing days we moved to a totally undeveloped 10 acres situated 2 hours west of San Antonio Texas.  There we designed a super energy efficient  home, using passive solar principles and SIP Panels, that included a solar hot water outside shower, grey water system, tankless propane water heater, rain water capture system and a composting toilet.  We did all of the work ourselves.

Like on our boats, through research,  careful design and installation,  our homestead was very successful.  The climate in that area is desert-like. It gets over 100 degrees for days at a time and then down into the teens.  And yet, we never had an electrical bill over $100. and never felt like we were camping out.

Future posts will cover these green adventures and more.

See you then,

Jim