rainwater revival 2016

I was honored to moderate a homeowner's panel at the 2016 Rainwater Revival yesterday in Dripping Springs, Texas. Although the bride and I consider ourselves urban rainwater radicals (we use rainwater for all of our outdoor water needs), the homeowners on the panel are the true radicals in that they meet all of their water needs, including indoor needs, through rainwater harvesting.

The panelists were articulate, funny, informative, and stayed within time constraints (honestly the best panel I've ever moderated [and I've moderated many]). And there was plenty of time for questions at the end! Some interesting tidbits: one homeowner had a pool, one had an outdoor shower, and another was a master gardener (she was fascinated with our wicking gardens), showing that you don't have to give up little (or big) luxuries when you live on rainwater. And becoming a rainwater radical turns you into a water conservation radical since the two are intimately related. Another homeowner inherited a rainwater system when they bought their house, which was a great perspective of the inevitable hand-off of a system from one homeowner to another. The discussions also provided further support to my rule of thumb of 10,000 gallons of storage per person for a full system for the Central Texas area.

Central Texas is ground zero for rainwater harvesting in the United States. The American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association was formed here (by an at-the-time work colleague, Hari Krishna), and many domestic manufacturers are sourced from the area (although manufacturing is beginning to spread to difference parts of Texas). The Revival sported some manufacturers. One theme was how to collect rainwater from the top of your rainwater tank.

The drive out and back from Dripping Springs (about 45 minutes one way) gave me time to think about writing a paper/article on the firm yield of rainwater harvesting, something that's been a touchy subject lately among rainwater proponents.

And as a bonus: It rained yesterday as well!

Stainless steel tanks from a Houston manufacturer.

water and electricity do not mix: conflicts between solar and rainwater harvesting

It has been taking a LONG time to get solar hooked up, but several weeks ago we were finally lined up for the final city inspection before flipping the switch.

And then we got red-tagged.

Red-tag means the inspector found something that prevents him or her from green-lighting the project.

The problem? We placed the rainwater tank too close to the electrical box. We need to be about 36 inches away, and we are 25 inches. That. my friends, is a serious bummer.

And it gets worse.

The bid to move the tank 11 inches came in at $3,500. Yikes!

We're presently getting a bid on moving the electrical service, but I don't expect that to be cheap either.

The moral of the story? "Make sure the dang tank is not too close to your electric box." or "Use a local vendor familiar with the local code to install the tank." The misplacement is on us since we used an out-of-town vendor that required us to identify and prep the tank site.

It sucks to make expensive mistakes. Live and learn.

gutter guards

I kinda despise cleaning gutters (who doesn't?). It's messy and it's dangerous (six packs of Lone Star and ladders don't mix...). And given that part of our house has two stories, cleaning gutters is even more of a challenge. At first I tried those cheapie plastic inserts that (1) looked awful and (2) simply didn't work all that well (didn't fit well and dislodged with a good wind). All in all, the cheapies were a fail.

After a quick look at Consumer Reports and an in-person inspection at Zingers, we decided to get the Tesla of gutter guards by going with GutterGlove Pro:

These babies are made of aluminum with a stainless steel mesh on top. They integrate best with metal and composition roofs (that long wing there goes underneath the roofing) but our installers (Austin Gutter King) also get it to work with TPO. And they have a nice, finished look about them that complements Modern construction.

The stuff ain't cheap, but it looks good and, thus far, seems to work good. We'll still need to go up there and brush off the screens once a year (or hire someone to do it), but we feel good that these puppies will do the job and last a long long while.

The gutter for the garage with Gutterglove Pro installed. Since we don't have a proper first-flush for the rainwater harvesting system,  these gutter guards also serve as an excellent filter for roof debris. 

rainwater rising

Falling actually...

Because we're using it!

We've pretty much got the system down on using rainwater. First, we're fortunate that our tank is located at nearly the highest point on our property, not that there's much slope, but every little bit helps (and you can't gravity feed against gravity...). Nevertheless, we'll be able to completely drain the tank and use it anywhere on the yard.

We currently have four dedicated hoses (going from right to left): (1) for the front of the house, (2) for the back driveway and patio, (3) for the back yard and garden, and (4) to fill watering cans at the tank. Since we're simply using gravity to feed the water, friction losses (loss of pressure and flow due to unnecessary bends, twists, and turns and the roughness of the hose interior) are really noticeable such that even greater pressure head drops across the lot don't fully compensate. Therefore, we've tried to keep the lines as straight as possible to maximize flow.

The coolest thing we've done so far with rainwater is wash the car. Austin is currently under drought restrictions such that you can't wash your car in your driveway, but we (ssshhhhh!!!!) pulled the car into the back patio area and washed it anyway (I'm hoping the restriction specifies the use of city water, but I don't know for sure...). The coolest thing about this coolest thing is that the "waste" water from the washing drips down and waters the grass in the driveway. Sweet!!! No pressure: Just used watering cans to pre-soak and then rinse. This is also the first time we drove a real car on the grasscrete. Held up just fine, thank you.

Watering the grass is a bit of a chore without pressure: You can't hook gravity fed water up to a sprinkler (not enough pressure), so thus far we've been watering by hand. Not a lot of fun because it's been getting so dang hot.

The worse thing about using rainwater? Using the rainwater. Seeing the storage in the tank go down is painful. We have to keep telling ourselves: "It's there to be used. It's supposed to go down." Nevertheless, it still hurts. Which is fine: It ensures we use what we have wisely (the bride wants another 3,000 gallons). And as we enter our traditionally hot and dry months, we're going to need to use as much as we can.

chains for rains

The rain chains came! The rain chains came! These are made of aluminum (aluminum = resilience and [relative] weightlessness) and are double circular loops connected by single circular loops. We picked them up from (ahem) rainchains.com where you can buy by the foot.

If you've never lived with rain chains before, you might be thinking, a la Hank on the Hill "What in the hell?", but they actually work. Water, through the miracle of hydrogen bonding, tends to stick to itself, so it tends to stick to the chains (and itself) on the way down to the ground. In certain cases, it's far more aesthetic to use a chain instead of gutter.

Although we missed Biblical Rains 1.0 several weeks ago, we caught Biblical Rains 2.0 last night: four inches of awesomeness all directed to our tank. The float be floating!

rain!

Cruddy photo and there's a real need for a rain chain, but some rain came early this evening and started filling the tank! I took this photo from a second story window and see that I need to put something under the right side of the "post" to level that sucker out.

Got about 3 inches in the tank, enough to float the float.

we got tanked last week...

Rainwater tanked!

Our rainwater tank got installed about a week and a half ago and our gutters got installed last Friday (at least the one for the garage that goes to the tank). Unfortunately, we missed the big rains that have passed through town the past few weeks (buh-bye 3,000 gallons of rainwater...), but we are ready for the next rains.

The first thing we had to do was clear a spot to lay down six inches of sand base for the tank:

We then had to have four yards of sand delivered to the house:

and then lay down a level base of sand in a 15-foot diameter:

With that done, the installers showed up and installed the tank:

The green stuff is there to protect the liner from the bolts holding the tank together.

The pipe to the right is the overflow pipe. The line of string running down is the level indicator.

It's a BIG tank: that sucker will hold 5,000 gallons of the wet stuff. It's a liner based system where the water is held by a liner:

 

Looking inside the finished tank. All that black stuff is the liner.

The white piping is for the overflow.

The lighted area is a screen and is where the water comes into the tank.

With the tank in, we could finally get the gutters installed. The gutters are the last item on the punch list with the builder and have been on hold until the tank went in. When the gutters on the house are finished, we'll be closing out (paying the last bit of the retainage) with the builder.

Here's what the gutter man improvised for the rainwater tank.

The vertical bit is vertical gutter but here is only being used to hold up the gutter extension over the tank. It looks good and looks like it will work good. We'll run a rain chain from the downspout to the tank.

Close up of the level gage. It's sitting on the ground cause that there tank is empty.

Back view of the tank. I turned the overflow pipe to be up against the tank and allow more of a path between the tank and the horno. Prolly need to paint that PVC silver...

Farther around the back is a ladder (cute!) which gains human access to the inside of the tank if needed (which is how I snapped photos of the interior). Hard to see, but to the right of the tank at the bottom is the outlet with a ball valve. That's where the water comes out when needed.

And there she is in all her glory! May the rains come soon!

I'll be giving a keynote at an upcoming American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association annual meeting in Austin and touch on our system in case you are in town and want to know more about the system or rainwater in general.

Texas Water Day: Rainwater and graywater harvesting

I was able to spend about an hour at Texas Water Day today, a day-long event at the Capitol o' Texas focused on water conservation. I missed all the speechifying but was able to stop in and chat with the booth people and complain about the size of the urinals at the capitol to random attendees (we're talking ginormous, at least the ones in the annex...). Sorry, no photos. Guys get freaked out when you're taking photos in the bathroom...

I was also able to chat with several folks about other important matters. The City of Austin conservation folks were there, and we yimmered and yammered about pressurized rainwater harvesting and graywater.

On the rainwater harvesting side, we discussed the requirements for reverse pressure zones (RPZs), licensed plumbers, and permits (things I'm not convinced are necessary for a system not even remotely connected to the city's system). The boothpeople told me that the city is considering exempting certain pressurized systems (say below 30 psi, quite a bit below the city's pressure) from the RPZ/licensed plumber/permit requirements. That would be a nice improvement. They're still scared of a fully pressurized system being accidentally or purposely connected to the city water and getting (insert ominous voice here) "water of unknown quality" in their system (of course someone purposely doing this would not be getting a permit to do so...). But I can see why they have concerns. Two fully-pressured systems on site increase the odds of someone screwing up, especially subsequent homeowners (and plumbers) that don't fully appreciate or understand the system.

We also talked about on-site graywater use. The boothers said that the city is in the process (any day now!) of revising those rules under a new "Laundry to Lawn" program where you can just run your waste laundry water out into your yard without the subsurface storage and drainfield requirements. Yippee!!! Too late for us (we didn't build in separate plumbing for graywater), but for subsequent graywater adopters, this is good news.

More about graywater:

       News article about graywater and rules use in Austin.

       City council resolution on graywater.

       Here's a proposal from the City's Graywater External Stakeholders Committee. 

       Some people have said "TO HELL WITH THE RULES!!!".
            They are the few, the proud, the Greywater Guerrillas.

I also ran into a pal I used to work with that is a turf expert, a subject she studied at Texas A and M. There's a lot of people I know that went to college and did nothing but grass, but this young lady truly went to college and studied nothing but grass! After talking about the house and landscaping (and getting reminded that she was a turf expert), she recommended Thunder Turf by Native American Seed. The bride and I have talked about using Habiturf, but it's expensive as hell. My turf-grrl friend said Thunder Turf was the way to go. She even texted me later: "Thunder Turf = Good Stuff".

Several weeks ago I was yapping at an event in Junction, Texas, and went to an after-event wine swig that turned out to be hosted by the proprietors of, you guessed it, Native American Seed! These folks live water conservation and even had their Texas Raincatcher Award, an award passed out by the Texas Water Development Board, proudly mounted on the wall in the living room. We drank wine and talked about grass, rainwater harvesting, and rain gardens. That, my friends, is a good evening (even without the wine).

Anyway, the universe seems to be lining up: THUNDER!!!  TURF!!!

The cool bit of swag I picked up at Texas Water Day was a shower timer from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality:

I've actually been wondering how long we (ahem...) I spend in the shower. Now I can do some timing! That old-skool grains-of-sand timer above allows five minutes for rub-a-dubbing.

Let the experiments begin!

something wicking this way comes: wicked wicking gardens!

Article in the paper this weekend about wicking gardens, and, wow, are they wicked! In short, a wicking garden is a raised bed with a water-filled underlayment that wicks upwards to the soil that waters the plants. A wicking garden uses capillary forces, the unseen powers of the vadose zone (sorry: had to slip in some hydrogeology in there...), such as a wick on a kerosene lamp or a paper towel dipped into a puddle, to do its deeds.

(diagram lifted from SAGE)

There are a number of advantages to gardening this way. First and foremost, it conserves water. Out of any collection of plants in residential outdoor landscaping, garden plants tend to require the most water. In hot Austin summers (and springs... and falls...), garden plants typically need to be watered every day which means losses to evaporation every day from inefficient application. A wicking garden waters from underneath, so losses to evaporation are minimized. Furthermore, the plants use what they need, and the wicking replaces what they used and nothing more. The gardens also act as rainwater catchments. If a big rain comes, the excess infiltrating water refills the reservoir below. The claim is that a wicking garden uses 50 percent less water than conventional watering techniques.

Another advantage is that wicking gardens don't have to be tended to everyday: the water reservoir waters the plants. Depending on the size of your reservoir, you can go days and days (and perhaps weeks) without worrying about your plants (great if you're going on vacation or are [ahem] just plain lazy). Every once in awhile you check the water level in the reservoir and top it off if needed.

Yet another advantage is that since the plants get exactly the water they need exactly when they need it, the growing conditions are ideal, so the plants go gangbusters.

What is there not to like? Nothing, really, although these gardens are a bit more effort to set up.

It turns out Austin has a number of advocates of wicking gardens, and there are ample resources online:

• LoveATX (a local take on wicking)
• Instructables (a wicking worm bed)
• Food Is Free (quick video demo from Austin gardening activists)
• YNN (local news channel)
• resilience (nice collection of wicked wicking info)

We are already planning on using livestock troughs for our garden:

so this wicking business makes absolute perfect sense for us. In fact, watering this way may prevent us from having to install the second rainwater tank.

Sold!

Upcoming conference: "Fables and Facts about Rainwater Quality"

A rainwater harvesting event out at McKinney Roughs Nature Park to, in the words of the organizers, Texas Water Savers and Innovative Water Solutions, will address:

Concerns and questions about “what’s in the water in a rainwater cistern” are common among homeowners, businesses and government agencies interested in using rainwater to for everything from landscaping to drinking. Do bird droppings foul the water? Does the quality of the water in the cistern degrade over time as it sits unused? How is rainwater different, in quality, from our groundwater? 

They will even test your rainwater if you bring a sample! August 18, 2012; $10 a head.

Click on the images below to see larger version.

rainwater and anger issues

Had a bidness lunch with a former colleague the other day and the chatter turned to building once the brisket and taters arrived (building a house is a great table topic: everyone has a horror story). My pal designed his own house (it can be done!) for a lot on the outskirts of town with plans of capturing rainfall for indoor and outdoor use. Once the neighbor realized that my pal would be relying on rainwater for his sole supply (and that he would be building on a long-empty lot valued as easy access to the greenbelt), the neighbor tried to rally the neighborhood association against him (everybody had their own water well). When that didn’t work, she sued.

At work, when someone threatens to sue or sues, someone will invariable yelp “They can’t sue us for that!” and my response is “Of course they can: You can be sued for anything!” However, winning a lawsuit is a totally different deal...

For my friend, there was no reason for him to be sued. No deed restrictions, covenants, or subdivision rules prevented him from relying on rainwater for his supply. Furthermore, he was burying his tanks so there were no aesthetic issues. Nonetheless, the neighbor sued alleging that relying on rainwater was going to adversely impact her property values. She withdrew the lawsuit after he showed that she had trespassed on his lot to take photos of his tanks.

He says he doesn’t get invited over for BBQs. And she doesn’t get invited over for a glass of cool, clear water...

 

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