DAILY NZ P A G E 12E C O L O R
12E
State
Rainfall collectors have good water, and lots of it
CONTINUED FROM 1E
Kight, 71, designed and in-
stalled the rainwater collection
system for the hilltop home he
and Mary Evelyn moved into in
August 2002. They lived in the
finished-out garage for a year as
their 3,500-square-foot house was
being built. All the while, they’ve
relied on rain, with no backup
water supply.
In planning the system, the re-
tired engineer pored over climate
data and studied his household
water use. His meticulous re-
cords show daily water use in-
doors of a fairly steady 70 gallons
per day. Factor in last year’s land-
scape watering, and the number
more than doubles to an annual-
ized average of 146 gallons a day.
Kight looked at annual rainfall
in Boerne, which averages about
36 inches a year, and at the
drought of record — in the 1950s
— in which there was no rain for
100 days. From his standing-seam
metal roof, which covers 6,400
square feet, he can collect 4,000
gallons of water from every inch
of rain. Crunching all those num-
bers, and padding the days with-
out rain to 120, he arrived at the
30,000-gallon storage capacity.
“I always want to be a little bit
conservative,” he says. Now he’s
adding three 1,550-gallon tanks
because, he says, Mary Evelyn
sees water being lost in heavy
rains.
Like the Kights, more people in
the Hill Country are going back
to the water-supply systems of
our forefathers. Weighing the cost
— and risk — of drilling a well
against the cost of a rainwater-
harvesting system was a factor
for Kight.
“The aquifers in the Hill Coun-
try definitely have sweet spots,
but there’s a risk of not getting
water,” says Chris Brown, a San
Antonio-based water conserva-
tion consultant and principal co-
author of the third edition of the
“Texas Manual on Rainwater
Harvesting,” a publication of the
Texas Water Development Board.
Unlike previous versions of the
manual, which focused mainly
on using rainwater collection for
landscape watering, the updated
manual, released in spring 2005,
devotes more attention to captur-
ing potable water.
Brown estimates the cost of a
whole-house rainwater collection
system around $15,000, in line
with what Kight spent on his sys-
tem. Prices vary according to the
size and material of the cisterns.
At Bohnert Lumber Co. in
Comfort, a 2,500-gallon polypropy-
lene tank costs $800, says Steve
Bohnert. Eight of the tanks would
collect 20,000 gallons of water at
$6,400. “A well is going to cost
you three times that amount
now,” Bohnert says. Wood and
metal tanks cost more, but Bohn-
ert says he has seen homeowners
disguise poly tanks by wrapping
them with cedar stays or galvan-
ized metal.
Polyethylene tanks that hold
3,000 gallons cost $1,000 each at
Golden Eagle Landscape in In-
gram, a company that sells equip-
ment and installs rainwater-har-
vesting systems. The biggest cost
variable in installation is in
building a pad for the tanks, says
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DAILY NZ P A G E 12E C O L O R
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
landscape designer Katherine
Crawford. Digging into a hillside,
building a retaining wall and
backfilling it will drive up the
cost, she notes.
Required filters don’t add sig-
nificantly to the cost, but home-
owners do need to have sufficient
rooftop areas, gutters and down-
spouts. Some rainwater harves-
ters elect to build “rain barns,”
shedlike structures that conceal
tanks and provide collection area
for rain runoff.
When Sandy and Raúl Peña ex-
plored water options for their
property near Center Point nine
years 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 of
the home they are building.
“It makes so much sense to use
the rain,” says Sandy Peña. “It’s
free, and we’re not punching an-
other hole in the aquifer.” The Pe-
ñas’ tanks filled to their 12,000-gal-
lon capacity with 10 inches of
rain more than a year ago, and
the Peñas have used only small
amounts of the water in mixing
mortar for the house. Now, they
rely on tanks that capture 6,500
gallons of water from their work-
210.342.0901
P U B D A T E 06-17-06 O P E R A T O R PDAVID D A T E // T I M E :
SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 2006 / * * * /
D
State
RESOURCES
SEMINAR AND TOUR
What: John Kight will discuss
rainwater collection in a seminar
sponsored by Cibolo Nature
Center. Participants can see
Kight’s system firsthand.
When: 9 a.m.-noon June 24.
Where: Meet at Cibolo Nature
Center parking lot, 140 City Park
Road, off Texas 46 East, Boerne.
Car-pool to Kight residence.
Cost: Members, $15; couples $20.
Nonmembers, $20, couples $25.
Reservations: Limited to 30
people. Call (830) 249-4616.
ON THE WEB
American Rainwater Catchment
Systems Association
www.arcsa-usa.org
Group founded in Austin in 1994
to promote rainwater catchment
in the U.S. Site includes links to
suppliers of materials for
rainwater collection systems.
PHOTOS BY WILLIAM LUTHER/STAFF
Texas Water Development Board
ABOVE: Raúl and ing as you’re going to get,” says
www.twdb.state.tx.us
Sandy Peña are al- John Kight.
most dwarfed by In each of the systems, water
Download the agency’s 88-page
the tanks that hold from gutters passes first through handbook that covers system
the rainwater they a roof washer that filters out dust, configuration, water quality and
collect at their leaves, blooms and bird drop- treatment. Web site features a
western Kerr pings. Kight uses a sock filter calculator to help property
County home. Their made of double-weave shade cloth owners design a system.
system, like the primarily to catch oak blooms.
Kights’, provides all “You do not want organic mate- Texas Cooperative Extension
their water. rial in the storage tanks,” he says. http://rainwaterharvesting.
LEFT: John Kight “It sours the water.” From the cis- tamu.edu
shows the UV filter terns, the Kights’ potable water Site explains the development of
(at right) that de- goes through a series of three fil- a system to collect rainwater for
stroys bacteria in ters. A 5-micron cloth filter irrigating the landscape.
the collected water, catches the first particles, then
which is well-fil- the water passes through a 3-mi- The Kights have a front-loading
tered first. cron charcoal filter. “Remember, a washer, which uses about 16 gal-
hair is 30 microns,” Kight notes. lons per load compared with
From there, it goes through a more than 40 gallons for a stan-
UV filter to zap any bacteria. dard top-loading model. Still,
The result is crystal-clear water notes Mary Evelyn Kight with a
that doesn’t leave sediment on fix- smile, “he lets me take one long
tures — all thanks to the rain. shower a week.”
shop and the 12-by-16-foot cabin ter-collection systems they use. “All you have to do is collect They also used drought-tolerant
they live in. “When friends come over, the enough water in rainy times to Sahara Bermuda grass in their
Both the Peñas and the Kights first thing they want to do is have get you through about three landscape and put down about 8
note the high quality of their wa- a drink of our water,” she says. months without rain,” Sandy inches of topsoil over the solid
ter. Mary Evelyn Kight says they Peña says. “We have a year’s sup- rock so the grass could establish
“By the time we actually drink didn’t use water from their sys- ply of water.” a deeper root system. Mary Eve-
our water, it’s almost the quality tem until it was analyzed in Kerr- Brown notes a weather adage lyn Kight irrigates only the small
of water used for kidney dialy- ville. Now, John Kight refers to that applies to the Hill Country: front yard, and only when it’s
sis,” says Sandy Peña, who re- records from twice-a-year testing. “Our climate can be adequately stressed. The grass is deep green
signed from her job as adminis- The water is soft — but a differ- described as drought punctuated in the front, and she’s run the
trator of the department of hu- ent soft, because soap rinses off by flood.” He adds, “Rain may sprinklers only twice this year.
man and molecular genetics at easily, the Kights note — and it come infrequently in Central She will water more frequently —
Baylor College of Medicine in measures 5 on total dissolved sol- Texas, but it does come.” and take two long showers a week
Houston when she and her hus- ids. Environmental Protection Still, rainwater harvesters such — when the new tanks are filled.
band moved to western Kerr Agency standards cap total dis- as the Peñas and Kights must use And her husband is keeping
County in 1996. Raúl Peña retired solved solids at 1,000 in public wa- water frugally. his promise of a lasting water
as a software developer for Shell ter supplies. “If you’re going to use rainwa- supply.
Oil and has designed the rainwa- “That’s about as close to noth- ter, you have to buy into the con-
servation lifestyle,” says Brown. tlehmann@express-news.net
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P U B D A T E 06-17-06 O P E R A T O R PDAVID D A T E // T I M E :