5.16.2008

Rain, rain come again another day!

Every one of my friends thinks we are weird because Alex and I collect water. Some people collect stamps, others phone numbers; we collect water. We are not doing it to hoard and sell to the thirsty (though that might be profitable). Instead, we do it for for our plants and for the Earth. We collect it in the shower and use it to water our trees. We collect it while the shower heats up and use it for our garden, the dog's bowl and our laundry. And yesterday we collected it from the sky (via the gutter). On Sunday we installed our two Fiskers Rainwater Collectors. They were simple to install: level the base, cut a 1.75'' section out of the gutter, insert the diverter' attach everything and pray for rain. My prayers were answered last night. Atlanta had some good rain, and just look at how much water we collected! At one point during the storm Alex went out and emptied water from the 55-gallon barrel into buckets and we collect even more. In total, we collected 140+ gallons of water. If my math is correct, that's almost $0.21 worth of water! We're rich (not really, but with no rain in the forecast this week, we will be able to water the garden without touching the hose). All you need to have your very own 'sky juice collector' is about $100 (available at Home Depot), a hacksaw (either from Home Depot or a cartoon prison cake), a drill, a screwdriver and a gutter (sorry apartment dwellers). If you are bold enough to try it, lave a comment or voicemail and let me know how it works out for you.