8/14/2019 Rainwater Jump
1/1
SEMINAR AND TOUR
What: John Kight will discussrainwater collection in a
seminarsponsored by Cibolo NatureCenter. Participants can seeKights
system firsthand.
When: 9 a.m.-noon June 24.
Where: Meet at Cibolo NatureCenter parking lot, 140 City
ParkRoad, off Texas 46 East, Boerne.Car-pool to Kight
residence.
Cost: Members, $15; couples $20.Nonmembers, $20, couples
$25.
Reservations: Limited to 30people. Call (830) 249-4616.
ON THE WEB
American Rainwater CatchmentSystems
Associationwww.arcsa-usa.orgGroup founded in Austin in 1994to
promote rainwater catchmentin the U.S. Site includes links
tosuppliers of materials for
rainwater collection systems.
Texas Water Development Boardwww.twdb.state.tx.usDownload the
agencys 88-pagehandbook that covers systemconfiguration, water
quality andtreatment. Web site features acalculator to help
propertyowners design a system.
Texas Cooperative
Extensionhttp://rainwaterharvesting.tamu.eduSite explains the
development ofa system to collect rainwater forirrigating the
landscape.
DAILY NZ P AG E 12E CO LO R P U B D A T E 06-17-06 O P E R A T O
R PDAVID DA T E // T I M E :
DAILY NZ P AG E 12E CO LO R P U B D A T E 06-17-06 O P E R A TO
R PDAVID DA T E // T I M E :
S
t
a
t
e
S
t
a
t
e
12E SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS SATURDAY,JUNE 17,2006
D/ * * * /
13409 WESTERN OAK DRIVE #101 493-7000SAN ANTONIO HAWAII PHOENIX
LAS VEGAS DALLAS HOUSTON TAMPA ORLANDO JACKSONVILLE BOCA RATON
CHICAGO
The
SHUTTER
Ask About
Insulates 2 To 3Times BetterThan Wood.
NOW, EVERY ROOMIN YOUR NEW HOME CAN HAVE A
BEAUTIFUL VIEW.
FREE 8 QUARTPOTTING SOIL
With Coupon.
While Supplies Last.
7561 E. Evans Rd. 651-6115 11601 Starcrest Dr. 404-1189
www.garden-villesa.com
BUY A SOFA, GET A CHAIR FOR $1!
FURNITURE CONCEPTS
Norwalk Gallery
15675 Hwy 281 N.South of Thousand OaksSan AntonioInteractive
Catalogue:www.norwalkfurniture.com
210.494.7764 800.494.7764*See Store for details.Sale ends July
2,2006.
ThousandOaks
BrookHollowStore Hours:TuesSat 10am6pmOr by
appointmentwww.furnitureconceptssa.com
Order A Custom Norwalk Leather or Fabric Sofa at Regular
Priceand Design an Imagine Thatpromotion Chair for $1*!
DollarSale!DollarSale!50% OFF SALE
North Star Mall(Upper Level) 210.342.0901*Discount applies to
select items. See store for details. Sale ends 6/30/06
Bring this ad in and get aFREE GIFT!
Make-Up Mirrors Sure Grip Tweezers Compact Mirrors 15x Spot
Mirrors Travel Bags & Accessories
Kight, 71, designed and in-stalled the rainwater
collectionsystem for the hilltop home heand Mary Evelyn moved into
inAugust 2002. They lived in thefinished-out garage for a year
astheir 3,500-square-foot house was
being built. All the while, theyverelied on rain, with no
backupwater supply.
In planning the system, the re-tired engineer pored over
climatedata and studied his householdwater use. His meticulous
re-cords show daily water use in-doors of a fairly steady 70
gallonsper day. Factor in last years land-scape watering, and the
numbermore than doubles to an annual-ized average of 146 gallons a
day.
Kight looked at annual rainfallin Boerne, which averages about36
inches a year, and at thedrought of record in the 1950s in which
there was no rain for100 days. From his standing-seammetal roof,
which covers 6,400square feet, he can collect 4,000gallons of water
from every inchof rain. Crunching all those num-bers, and padding
the days with-out rain to 120, he arrived at the30,000-gallon
storage capacity.
I always want to be a little bitconservative, he says. Now
hesadding three 1,550-gallon tanksbecause, he says, Mary Evelynsees
water being lost in heavyrains.
Like the Kights, more people inthe Hill Country are going backto
the water-supply systems ofour forefathers. Weighing the cost and
risk of drilling a wellagainst the cost of a rainwater-harvesting
system was a factorfor Kight.
The aquifers in the Hill Coun-try definitely have sweet
spots,but theres a risk of not gettingwater, says Chris Brown, a
SanAntonio-based water conserva-
tion consultant and principal co-author of the third edition of
theTexas Manual on RainwaterHarvesting, a publication of theTexas
Water Development Board.Unlike previous versions of themanual,
which focused mainlyon using rainwater collection forlandscape
watering, the updatedmanual, released in spring 2005,devotes more
attention to captur-ing potable water.
Brown estimates the cost of awhole-house rainwater
collectionsystem around $15,000, in linewith what Kight spent on
his sys-tem. Prices vary according to thesize and material of the
cisterns.
At Bohnert Lumber Co. inComfort, a 2,500-gallon polypropy-lene
tank costs $800, says SteveBohnert. Eight of the tanks wouldcollect
20,000 gallons of water at
$6,400. A well is going to costyou three times that amountnow,
Bohnert says. Wood andmetal tanks cost more, but Bohn-ert says he
has seen homeownersdisguise poly tanks by wrappingthem with cedar
stays or galvan-ized metal.
Polyethylene tanks that hold3,000 gallons cost $1,000 each
atGolden Eagle Landscape in In-gram, a company that sells
equip-ment and installs rainwater-har-vesting systems. The biggest
costvariable in installation is inbuilding a pad for the tanks,
says
landscape designer KatherineCrawford. Digging into a
hillside,building a retaining wall andbackfilling it will drive up
thecost, she notes.
Required filters dont add sig-nificantly to the cost, but
home-owners do need to have sufficientrooftop areas, gutters and
down-spouts. Some rainwater harves-ters elect to build rain
barns,shedlike structures that concealtanks and provide collection
areafor rain runoff.
When Sandy and Ral Pea ex-plored water options for theirproperty
near Center Point nineyears ago, they got a $12,000 esti-mate for a
well. Like the Kights,
they opted for rainwater collec-tion and have installed four
3,000-gallon cisterns in the basement ofthe home they are
building.
It makes so much sense to usethe rain, says Sandy Pea. Itsfree,
and were not punching an-other hole in the aquifer. The Pe-as tanks
filled to their 12,000-gal-lon capacity with 10 inches ofrain more
than a year ago, andthe Peas have used only smallamounts of the
water in mixingmortar for the house. Now, theyrely on tanks that
capture 6,500gallons of water from their work-
shop and the 12-by-16-foot cabinthey live in.
Both the Peas and the Kightsnote the high quality of their
wa-ter.
By the time we actually drinkour water, its almost the qualityof
water used for kidney dialy-sis, says Sandy Pea, who re-signed from
her job as adminis-trator of the department of hu-man and molecular
genetics atBaylor College of Medicine inHouston when she and her
hus-band moved to western KerrCounty in 1996. Ral Pea retiredas a
software developer for ShellOil and has designed the rainwa-
ter-collection systems they use.When friends come over, the
first thing they want to do is havea drink of our water, she
says.
Mary Evelyn Kight says theydidnt use water from their sys-tem
until it was analyzed in Kerr-ville. Now, John Kight refers
torecords from twice-a-year testing.The water is soft but a
differ-ent soft, because soap rinses offeasily, the Kights note and
itmeasures 5 on total dissolved sol-ids. Environmental
ProtectionAgency standards cap total dis-solved solids at 1,000 in
public wa-ter supplies.
Thats about as close to noth-
ing as youre going to get, saysJohn Kight.
In each of the systems, waterfrom gutters passes first througha
roof washer that filters out dust,leaves, blooms and bird
drop-pings. Kight uses a sock filtermade of double-weave shade
clothprimarily to catch oak blooms.
You do not want organic mate-rial in the storage tanks, he
says.It sours the water. From the cis-terns, the Kights potable
watergoes through a series of three fil-ters. A 5-micron cloth
filtercatches the first particles, thenthe water passes through a
3-mi-cron charcoal filter. Remember, ahair is 30 microns, Kight
notes.
From there, it goes through a
UV filter to zap any bacteria.The result is crystal-clear
water
that doesnt leave sediment on fix-tures all thanks to the
rain.
All you have to do is collectenough water in rainy times toget
you through about threemonths without rain, SandyPea says. We have
a years sup-ply of water.
Brown notes a weather adagethat applies to the Hill Country:Our
climate can be adequatelydescribed as drought punctuatedby flood.
He adds, Rain maycome infrequently in CentralTexas, but it does
come.
Still, rainwater harvesters suchas the Peas and Kights must
usewater frugally.
If youre going to use rainwa-ter, you have to buy into the
con-servation lifestyle, says Brown.
The Kights have a front-loadingwasher, which uses about 16
gal-lons per load compared withmore than 40 gallons for a stan-
dard top-loading model. Still,notes Mary Evelyn Kight with
asmile, he lets me take one longshower a week.
They also used drought-tolerantSahara Bermuda grass in
theirlandscape and put down about 8inches of topsoil over the
solidrock so the grass could establisha deeper root system. Mary
Eve-lyn Kight irrigates only the smallfront yard, and only when
itsstressed. The grass is deep greenin the front, and shes run
thesprinklers only twice this year.She will water more frequently
and take two long showers a week when the new tanks are filled.
And her husband is keepinghis promise of a lasting
watersupply.
[email protected]
Rainfall collectors have good water, and lots of itCONTINUED
FROM 1E
PHOTOS BY WILLIAM LUTHER/STAFF
ABOVE: Ral andSandy Pea are al-most dwarfed bythe tanks that
holdthe rainwater theycollect at theirwestern KerrCounty home.
Theirsystem, like theKights, provides alltheir water.
LEFT: John Kightshows the UV filter(at right) that de-stroys
bacteria inthe collected water,which is well-fil-tered first.
RESOURCES
