Bean Tree Farm’s Native Foods, Herbs and Earth Crafts Workshops
www.beantreefarm.com

Ongoing and seasonal, we combine workshops and delicious native foods, customized for the interests of the participants.

When: 1st and 3rd Saturdays, 9:30am – 12:30pm (10am – 3pm for the more intensive workshop projects)

Register or info at: beantreefarm@gmail.com

September:
4- Prickly Pear Power! Solar Barbecue Sauce and Rubs (9:30-12:30)
18- Fermenting Evolution- Desert Borscht, Kombuchas and Vinegars (9:30-12:30)

October:
2- Beautiful Bean Trees- Sprouts and Snacks (9:30-12:30)
16- Play in the Mud, Cob Building and Sculpture (10am-3pm)

November:
6- No Workshop- attend Mesquite Pancake Breakfast and Milling at Dunbar Spring!
20- Native Clays and Plasters , Cactus Juice Etc. (9:30-12:30)

December:
4- Making Herbal Salves and Tinctures ( 10am-3pm)

Foods and herbs are collected during their seasons and integrated into delicious and nutritious feasts, which highlight the day’s workshop. Barbara’s and Jill’s new cook booklet features some of these in “Wild Recipes, Seasonal Samplers” (available at the workshops). Topics include: Cholla, Saguaro, Palo Verde, Ironwood, Mesquite, Prickly Pear, Wolfberry, Hackberry, Barrel Cactus harvests, preparation and feasts; Prickly Pear borscht, barbecue sauce and rubs; Cactus seeds, fibers and their many uses; Herbal oils, salves and tincture making, Native herbs for seasoning; Kombucha and vinegars made with herbs and cactus fruit; Desert kimchis and krauts; Cactus and Chapparral in earth plasters; Cob art and building projects including walls, benches, ovens and sculptures.

Location: Bean Tree Farm is about 15 miles northwest of downtown Tucson. Directions and more info sent with registration.

Cost: Half day, $35. Day workshop, $65.

Partial scholarships may be available. Includes all class materials.

Class size is limited to 15 participants. At all workshops, wear comfortable clothes and walking shoes.

Instructors: Barbara Rose, guest instructors

Enhance Your Educational Experience: Workshop participants may add a stay at Bean Tree Lodge, explore green, solar earthen building and appropriate technology, and learn about conserving water and energy in the Sonoran Desert. For more information, contact us at the address above and check out the Bean Tree Farm brochure.

Number 4 in a series of Drops in a Bucket blog posts on Brad Lancaster’s and David Eisenberg’s U.S. State Department-sponsored adventures and gleanings in the Middle East

Northern Jordan, April 2009

Throughout northern Jordan we visited dynamic villages that were enhancing their quality of life by recycling water and money as close to their sources as possible.

The money is recycled primarily via revolving community-loan funds. Here is how it works: a village collectively gathers a pot of money, a portion of which is lent out to its villagers to fund projects the village has deemed worthy. The most popular projects are those that recycle water with rainwater-harvesting cisterns and greywater-harvesting systems, while others used their loans to finance composting projects, organic gardens and orchards, and small livestock – all investments that increase local productivity along with the resiliency and sustainability of the village and its natural resources. A villager who receives a loan has two and a half years to pay it back, interest free. The money can then be lent out to yet another villager. The village’s productivity keeps improving with the investments, enabling the village to give itself more loans, continuing the upward spiral of recycled investments that stay in the community. Neither non-locally owned banks nor interest drain off the profits.

Turning $20 into $400 by slowing, spreading, and sinking it like water

The value of these funds is increased even further when it cycles multiple times within the same community. This added boost can be assured by hiring fellow villagers to help with the work or provide locally obtained materials for the projects. For example, when $20 is cycled or invested within a community 20 times (you give it to a local carpenter, who gives it to a local woodsman, who gives it to a local baker, who gives it to a local produce seller, etc.), its effective value is increased to $400 ($20 x 20). But if that $20 were spent in a national or multi-national chain store on imported goods, the bulk of the $20’s benefit in the community would be rapidly drained away, reducing its value in the community to something more like 50 cents, maybe even less. Those 50 cents might go to the local clerk’s paycheck, while the rest would flow to the distant corporate office and distributors.

In the most sustainable of cases, the revolving-loan fund is seeded by the village itself, with each villager chipping in an equal amount of money to create the fund.  But most of the villages I visited got their initial loan-fund monies from grants allocated by such NGOs as Mercy Corps, JOHUD, and CARE International. The conditions that had to be met in order to receive the loan-fund seed money were that the village had to have an equitable means of making community decisions where no family or individual would dominate, and men and women had to have equal say throughout the decision-making process.

The Growing Tank Culture of Whadneh

In the village of Whadneh, as in much of the majority world, municipal water comes to homes and businesses only once a week, and in summer as many as three weeks can pass between opportunities to replenish one’s water supply. In some areas there is no municipal water or too little of it, and water needs to be trucked in. Thus tanks are on every rooftop to catch whatever water they can when the municipal water lines are flowing. That water can then be distributed via gravity to any point below the tank. The Jordanian government even mandates (but does not necessarily enforce) that water tanks must be installed in the base of every building, as well. These tanks are meant for the storage of municipal water, but they can instead (or also) be used to capture roof runoff. A water-tank mentality and culture already exists, so it is relatively easy to shift to the storage of a more sustainable water source – rainwater.

I believe that the inexpensive and distributed capture of on-site water should always precede the very expensive transport of distant water (as in the centralized Red Sea Dead Sea Canal project), especially since harvesting such water often eliminates, or at least greatly reduces, the  perceived need for that distant water and the huge amounts of power and fuel required to transport it.

Water trucks are ubiquitous in Jordan. Their heavy loads rapidly deteriorate roads, their exhaust pollutes the air, and their engines consume scarce fuel. Here one pumps water up to a rooftop tank in downtown Amman.

Ali Flahmohammad Khtatabh, the Imam of Whadneh, proudly showed me the 2,500 Jordanian dinars’ worth (as of this posting, equivalent to over US$3,500) of cisterns the village loan fund had financed at his home and the homes of his children. He was the first in his village to install cisterns, and as its spiritual leader, he made it clear that the harvest of rainwater was in alignment with both the teachings of the Koran and good sense. He was so happy with the cisterns that he kept building more.

Two of Ali Flahmohammad Khtatabh’s cisterns. One in the foreground catches ground-surface runoff for irrigation. The other, below his terrace/porch, captures roof runoff for domestic use.

Pump atop cistern that collects ground-surface runoff

Ali’s family on the terrace. The cistern is below the terrace.

When I asked Ali Flahmohammad Khtatabh which he preferred: rainwater or municipal water, he replied, “Rainwater of course, it tastes better, and it is the water that comes direct from Allah!” What’s more, Ali’s family has far more control over this water than they do over the municipal water supply.

That harvested rainwater then goes even further through its reuse as greywater for irrigation.

Greywater

The vast majority of greywater systems I saw in Jordan directed household greywater via gravity to reed beds: plastic-lined, gravel filled basins planted with riparian reeds. The reeds helped filter the greywater, which was then collected in a plastic barrel from which water could be pumped through a hose to the landscape.

Revolving-community-loan-funded, dark-greywater-harvesting reed bed

Irrigating an olive tree with greywater pumped from the reed-bed system

All household greywater, including kitchen-sink water (“dark greywater” that some consider blackwater due to the greater amount of organic matter it contains), is directed to these systems. The reed beds are used to help treat/filter the kitchen-sink water and its ample fats, organic bits, and soap goop; however, since the reeds are riparian species they tend to consume large quantities of the greywater that might otherwise be used to irrigate less-water-needy fruit trees.

Riparian plants also require a constant supply of water. If a family leaves for a few weeks without leaving the water running, the reeds can die. I saw many reed beds without any reeds. In addition, the barrels collecting the greywater are often a source of odors. When you store greywater in a tank it starts to stink, thus I typically prefer direct discharge of greywater to multiple points of mulched, vegetated soil. And I question both the reliability and cost of operating pumps in low-income communities where the power supply can be as sporadic as the water supply. There seems to be room for improvement on this system.

A Gravity-Fed Greywater-Harvesting Option

I think there is a great opportunity here to experiment with entirely gravity-fed, tankless branched-drain and multi-drain greywater systems. I’d be very interested in how well they’d fare and be accepted. If implemented, these systems would distribute greywater to multiple points rather than to just one. Kitchen-sink water could be directed to separate, smaller systems. We installed one such system in the Palestinian village of Marda in June 2010 – follow this link for photos.

With such multi-point distributed-greywater systems I have often found reed bed infiltration to be unnecessary for kitchen-sink dark greywater, as long as the bulk of the kitchen organic matter goes into a compost bin instead of down the drain, and appropriate soaps are used. (See Chapter 12 of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2 for more on these systems. Visit the greywater-harvesting image gallery on my site for additional photos.)

Kitchen-sink dark greywater being harvested in a mulched and vegetated basin

Worms feasting in soils that receive kitchen-sink dark greywater. The worms feast just under the mulch.

Greywater-Appropriate Soaps and Detergents

Greywater-appropriate soaps can be hard to find in stores outside the U.S. and Europe, but this can change.

Mohammed Ayesh of NCARE, a government agricultural-extension-like organization that supports many of the revolving-community-loan-funded efforts, informed me that Dr Murad Bino, Executive Director for the Islamic Network on Water Resources Development & Management, had worked with a local Jordanian soap manufacturer to develop sodium-free soaps and detergents for use with greywater systems in Jordan (this is necessary since sodium, or salt, is a killer in these alkaline dryland soils). But apparently these soaps are no longer being produced, since the grant that was funding the project has run out. Hopefully production and use can be restarted, this time with a business plan that will keep everything functioning without dependence on grants. There is a huge need. Everywhere I traveled in the Middle East, greywater harvesting is being researched and promoted. The missing link is appropriate, locally made biocompatible soaps, shampoos, detergents, and cleansers.

Banning of Toxic Soap Ingredients

Israel is the first country (to my knowledge) that has gone so far as to ban certain soap ingredients that are harmful to soils. During my 2010 trip to the Middle East I learned that Israel has banned the inclusion of boron in any soaps or detergents sold there. Israel reuses 61% of its wastewater, primarily as an agricultural-irrigation source. The ban was put in place after it was found that boron from soaps and detergents going down the drain before the ban had been killing crops irrigated with treated wastewater.

(Follow this link for more on greywater-compatible soaps.)

Conclusion

If we are to continue as a species, we need to be more conscious of the resources we use (water, power, money, soil, food, etc). Where do we get them from? What do we do with them? Do we degeneratively dispose of them after a single use? Or do we regeneratively cycle them for greater and greater potential of reuse and new life?

Revolving community-loan funds that invest in regenerative systems are an incredible way to do a lot more with a lot less, by reconnecting people with their money-resource flow much like water-harvesting does with the water flow. Link the two as is being done in Jordan, and you have something really juicy!

Date: Thursday, September 23
Time: 7 pm

Location:
Village Books
1200 Eleventh Street
Bellingham, WA 98225

Phone: (360) 671-2626 or (800) 392-BOOK

Contact: Nan Macy, Village Books Events Coordinator

More info to come…

.
.
A new Ecosa program: 5-Day Intensive Workshop on

Planning for Regenerative Urban Environments

October 11 – 15, 2010
Prescott, AZ

EARLY REGISTRATION DISCOUNT DEADLINE
SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Workshop includes:
Project Design Charette
Complex Adaptive Systems
Self Organization Principles
The Nature/Human Interface
The Future of Urban Living
Radical Urban Design Concepts
City Infrastructure
Sustainability Value Mapping
Resource Mapping and Assessment
Watershed Ecology and Urban Integration
Urban Food Production
LEED for Neighborhood Development
Living City Challenge

Workshop Leaders:
TOM HAHN
ANTONY BROWN

Be one of 14 individuals to join the Ecosa Institute for this exciting new workshop intensive that integrates cutting -dge urban design principles into an experiential project-based learning intensive.

Participants of all backgrounds are welcome.

There is a recognition that we need to treat the issues in our cities comprehensively. We advocate a systems approach tosolve the social, economic and environmental probems we face; we must reform all the systems and linkages to create exciting livable urban environments.

For more information and to register: ecosainstitute.org/programs/summer-workshops.html

To download the PDF program flyer, click here: Regenerative Urban Design Workshop

Date: Saturday, August 7
Time: 4:30 or 5 pm until 6 or 6:30 pm (summer-style)

Location: Café Passé, 415 North 4th Avenue, Tucson

Cost: Free
Note: This talk is being given primarily for a group of students touring Tucson; while these students get priority seating, any extra seats can be taken by anyone that shows up.

Description of talk:
This inspiring power point presentation shares eight universal principles of water harvesting along with simple strategies that turn water scarcity into water abundance. They empower you to create integrated water-sustainable landscape plans at home and throughout your community. Rainwater harvesting is the process of capturing rain and making the most of it as close as possible to where it falls. Greywater harvesting is the process of directing water from household sink, bathtub, shower, and washing machine drains into the soils of the landscape where the water is naturally filtered and reused to generate more on-site resources. The two work hand in hand, and can reduce our water consumption by 30 to 50%! You’ll see examples enhancing local food security, passively cooling cities in summer, reducing costs of living and energy consumption, controlling erosion, averting flooding, reviving dead waterways, minimizing water pollution, building community, creating celebration, and more.

Number 3 in a series of Drops in a Bucket blog entries on Brad Lancaster’s and David Eisenberg’s U.S. State Department-sponsored adventures and gleanings in the Middle East

Al Absaa, Saudi Arabia, April 2009

At Al Absaa we toured irrigation projects within the largest oasis in Saudi Arabia. Over one million date palms grow here. But the springs that have fed the oasis for generations are going dry. Oil drilling by Aramco has diverted, blocked, or consumed water flows that used to feed the oasis. The city of 1.5 million is also rapidly growing and consuming additional water. This is a story I encounter again and again the world over; this time it just happens to be in Saudi Arabia.

To keep the oasis and the agriculture watered, 75,000 cubic meters of treated sewage per day are directed to the fields. There are 1,500 kilometers of irrigation canals. Every year, 45 kilometers of these canals are converted to sealed or covered canals. Farmers that flood-irrigate get 3 Saudi riyals (one SR equals about US$0.27) per kilogram of their dates. Those that use drip irrigation get 5 SR/kg. Eighty million riyals is being spent to purify irrigation drainage and sewage, which is then blended with spring water from 32 natural springs before being directed into the irrigation system. The sewage from a city 140 km away will also be directed to the oasis by 2010. Nonetheless, the water table continues to drop.

Recycled water directed into the irrigation canals

Pumps used to move the recycled water through the irrigation system

One spring, “The Mother of Seven (Streams),” is now the mother of none. Twenty years ago it stopped flowing on its own. Water must now be pumped. We looked down into the deep hole from which the spring water used to flow. The hole was dripping, but empty.

The pump house and grate over the spring

The spring

Our hosts and guides

Speaking to the father and son mentioned above. Photo by David Eisenberg.

A father and son were swimming in a pool fed by the spring’s pumps. The father told me that the water used to be warmer, that he always swam here as a boy, and was glad his son could do likewise. I wondered if there would be water here for his grandson to swim in.

The oil drilling, along with the rapid growth and consumption made possible by cheap oil, are killing the oasis. In a way, for the short-term, the cheap oil is also extending the life of the oasis by powering pumping and treatment. But this life extension is completely oil-dependent, and there are many problems with pollution caused by the oil consumption. The oasis thrived for hundreds of years requiring no pumps, no power. The water was readily accessible. When the oil runs out, it may be that no one will be able to access the water because there will be no power to run the pumps. Though if the excessive pumping stops, maybe, very slowly, the ground water will eventually rise again.

While, the Saudi efforts to save or at least extend the life of the oasis are very impressive, I couldn’t help but think that more resources should be invested in restoring (and preventing further destruction of) the natural system, rather than just the mechanical.

Palm frond fence. Others in the area were made only of palm fronds – a great reuse of locally abundant materials.

After touring the irrigation system, our enthusiastic, ever-gracious guide Ibrahim lead us to one of the many highlights of the trip – Red Bread or Hasawi bread.

On the front porch of an old roadside shop sat the rotund baker. When we arrived he went to work slapping 12-inch-wide flatbreads up against the inside of a wood-fired oven shaped like an olla. The bread stuck to the side of the oven and when removed was absolutely delicious. It was spiced with dates and fennel — I was in heaven. Not just because of the incredible food, but because this place was old and felt rooted and real. The dates were from just outside the shop. No new, modern glitz. Just great local food. I dreamed that if I were living here, I’d be a daily regular and maybe even an apprentice.

Red bread ready to eat

Red bread being made

See the books Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond for strategies that help restore natural water systems. And see the Drops in the Bucket Blog at www.HarvestingRainwater.com for more dispatches from the Middle East and beyond.

Join hosts Technicians for Sustainability (tfssolar.com) on August 26, 2010, at 6:30pm for a captivating 1-hour talk, “Water Wanderings and More in the Middle East,” with Brad Lancaster,  author of the award-winning Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond.

In this presentation, Brad will share inspiring stories and images gleaned during two recent trips to the Middle East: a U.S. State Department-sponsored trip to Jordan and Saudi Arabia in 2009, and a return trip to the region in 2010 to teach permaculture in Palestine and conduct research in Syria and Israel.

Topics Include: sustainable groundwater extraction with ancient gravity-fed qanats; the forgotten and refound cisterns of old Jeddah; revived Nabatean runoff farms producing almonds, carob, olives, pomegranates, grapes, figs, and more on just 4 inches (50 mm) of rain per year; rainwater tea; revolving community loan funds; water wise women of Jordan; tank culture in a water-truck culture, the spiral cisterns of the Bell Caves, salvaged plastic bottle irrigation, and kanafa.

Where: TFS’s downtown location at 612 N 7th Avenue. Car parking available on the north side of 5th Street. Plenty of bike parking available.

Reserve Encouraged: Please RSVP by August 19th. Light Middle Eastern refreshments will be served. To reserve your spot, please email TFS community outreach coordinator Aimee King at aimee@tfssolar.com or call 740-0736.

If you are inspired to help spread the word about this event, you can download TFS’ Water Wanderings Talk Flyer and email it around or print and hang on your favorite community bulletin board. Thanks!

During this free workshop you will learn how to implement water-harvesting earthworks with Brad Lancaster on one of his sites here in Tucson.

There will be no lecture and no slide show — all instruction will happen as you work.

This is aptly described as a WORKshop — please attend only if you can come prepared to wield a shovel and give your sweat glands a good workout. In return, you will learn the art & science of earthworks from Brad himself.

Refreshments and refills of your own water bottle will be provided.

Be prepared to be outdoors in the sun for the duration of the workshop. Wear a hat and closed-toe shoes.

Brad will provide some tools, but if you have a shovel, pick, or iron rake you could bring, please do so.

Limited to 20 people.

For location and directions, send an email to admin@harvestingrainwater.com.

By Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com, ©2010

Number 2 in a series of Drops in a Bucket blog entries on Brad Lancaster’s and David Eisenberg’s U.S. State Department-sponsored adventures and gleanings in the Middle East

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, April 2009

Most of the water people now drink in Saudi Arabia is desalinated seawater. And there are great costs, among them air pollution from the power plants which burn oil to run the desalination plants. We read articles daily on the many people falling ill from the pollution.

Air pollution from Jeddah power plant that powers desalination plant. Courtesy of David Eisenberg.

The new Saudi Arabia is very dependent on this oil, not only for water, but for the mechanical heating and cooling of the new modern buildings of imported concrete, steel, and glass.

New stand-alone modern high-rise and its conceptual “courtyard” (vertical space in the glass wall) referencing the functional traditional courtyards where people gathered in a passively protected microclimate

Traditional old-Jeddah courtyard created by the shelter of clustered buildings

But the traditional dynamic Saudi culture was borne from surviving and thriving in this hot, dry climate — without oil, imported building materials, or appliances.  We wanted to see the old practices of harvesting water, building with local materials, and passive cooling and heating. So, we headed for old Jeddah.

Old Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is a gem, and as our guide Sami promised, it is replete with a rich tradition of harvesting rainwater, life, and vernacular architecture. Sami Nawwar was our lively host. He is caretaker of the grand Nasseif House/Al Balad at the core of old Jeddah. Sami is hugely excited about old Jeddah and has been fighting to save it for over 40 years. (Throughout our travels we saw the rapid demolition of the old, earthen or coral, passively cooled, pre-oil sections of cities and towns to make way for imported-resource-dependent modern buildings.)

Nasseif House/Al Balad in old Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Into the Nasseif House we went. The ceilings are very tall to gain the benefits of passive cooling. Ample shaded windows catch cooling sea breezes. And the walls are made of coral brick interlaced with wooden bond beams, of sorts, every five courses or so to make the building safer in earthquakes. The staircase was built very wide with short steps so horses could easily climb to the top.

Sami, our gracious host. See brown wooden bond beams in the wall behind him. They help stabilize the coral brick walls in earthquakes.

Coral brick

Then evening prayer began and Sami shouted, “Quick, to the top! You must hear the prayers from the roof!” From every direction came the call to prayer, rising and falling like the chaotic roof lines around us. Amazing. As the sun set and darkness fell over the city we had tea on the roof, the cooling breeze refreshing us.

In the heyday of Nasseif House/Al Balad, children would sweep off the roof before the rains, and the rainfall would be directed to downspouts taking the water to the huge basement cistern. All non-human waste was composted or fed to livestock. Human waste went into a septic tank that was cleared once a year, then washed with salt. (I did not find out where the human waste went after being cleared from the septic tank.) [Entry continues below.]

Skyline view #1 from rooftop

Skyline view #2 from rooftop

Skyline view #3 from rooftop

Looking down into the neighborhood from rooftop

Looking out into Jeddah from rooftop

Tea on rooftop

Distant gas flame seen from rooftop

Cistern is below the floor. Note cistern hatch.

Cistern hatch and cistern below

BREAK]
“We’re late, we’ve got to go!” our U.S. State Department chaperones informed us. But Sami had promised he’d take me inside a neighboring cistern. I shot him a look. “Follow me,” he said, and we ran past the group. We rushed out of the building, down the street, and along the old mosque.

Mosque and stores

Dress shop we entered on left

Turning sharply we entered a modern women’s clothing shop, and sped to the back. Sami stopped in front of a dress hanging on a wall and said, “We are here.”

The secret cistern entrance

He then pushed the dress aside, revealing a hidden door. We stepped down into a massive cistern with vaulted ceilings. It was the cistern for the mosque. I was having so much fun. We had entered a hidden world, feeling something like the half floor in the movie Being John Malkovich. It was also further confirmation that every culture with a dry season has a tradition of water harvesting, and Jeddah was no exception. With just over 2 inches (50 mm) of rain a year it was not only possible, but absolutely necessary. [Entry continues below.]

Just a small part of the vast cistern (now used for the storage of clothes) below the mosque

Cistern inlet and outlet in cistern ceiling. Not currently in use.

These cisterns are seldom used today, what with the temporary abundance of plumbed and pumped distilled seawater, but I feel they are a major part of the solution for the past, today, and the future. These cisterns were the water source of the past. And they could be the, or at least a considerable, water source of today and tomorrow. They work on gravity, not pumps. They do not require pipes throughout the city, only pipes from every roof to a tank below. Beneficial redundancy and resiliency. They also reduce flooding.

Jeddah gets little rain, but most of it comes all at once in big downpours. After our visit floods did major damage in Jeddah. Sprawling construction of new buildings and roads is occurring all over, paving ever more of the watershed. Unfortunately the runoff from this new infrastructure (and the old) is now directed to streets rather than tanks. Thus these floods are more human-created than weather-created.

There is a rich history of praying for rain in this dry country, but the management of that rain has been largely forgotten with the temporarily available “cheap” oil and desalinated water. Much of the answer to those prayers lurks under floors and behind dresses, waiting to be remembered.

See Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, for more on this topic. And note that this first book will be available in Arabic by the end of this year (2010). Check back at www.HarvestingRainwater.com for further updates.

By Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com, ©2010

I am finally getting to the sharing of my travel gleanings. This is the first of a series to follow – so keep checking back. This piece is from my U.S. State Department-sponsored trip to Jordan and Saudi Arabia in 2009. David Eisenberg of DCAT and I were sent as part of an Earth Day-themed cross-cultural exchange. David spoke about green building. I spoke about water harvesting. The trip was incredible, perhaps most of all due to the face-to-face interactions with Jordanians and Saudis – all of whom were incredibly welcoming, gracious hosts. This breed friendships and sharing, rather than the fear generated by the aggression of politicians and nations and misinformation in the media. My heartfelt thanks to all our Jordanian, Saudi, and State-Department hosts.

April 2009

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, receives only about 2 inches (50 mm) of rain a year. Being that dry, it was odd that water was flowing down the streets and mosquitoes were fierce.

In this hot and humid coastal desert climate, air conditioners abound and their condensate steadily and wastefully drips into the street, pooling where mosquito populations then mushroom. But on occasion you see a wild matrix of funnels and hoses directing that condensate from coolers to courtyard plantings. Here where rainfall is low, but humidity intense, the potential for condensate and dew harvesting is very high.

Bucket and condensate creek, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Hoses directing air-conditioner condensate to courtyard plantings, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

How much condensate can you harvest?

IN A DRY CLIMATE/SEASON:
• A home air conditioner can generate 0.25 gallons (1 liter) of condensate/day

• A large commercial air conditioner can generate 500 gallons (1,900 liters)/day

IN A HUMID CLIMATE/SEASON:
• A home air conditioner can generate 18 gallons (68 liters) of condensate/day

• A large commercial air conditioner can generate 2,000 gallons (7,500 liters)/day

In the humid climate of Austin, Texas (USA), the condensate from the City Hall air conditioners provides all the water needed for a large waterfall at the City Hall entrance.

Top of the Austin City Hall air-conditioner-condensate waterfall

Bottom of the Austin City Hall air-conditioner-condensate waterfall

Where does your condensate go? If to the sewer drain, redirect it to water-harvesting earthworks and their associated plantings.

Condensate is distilled water. It does not contain salt. Thus it is a high-quality water source. Though there is the possibility of the condensate leaching lead from lead-based solder, if this is used in the cooler’s plumbing, or copper from copper pipes. Air-conditioner manufacturers take note: you can make a cooler without these toxic materials, and then market your appliance as both an air conditioner and a water machine.

Can you harvest condensate in your area? If you have condensate then the answer is yes.

The signs are clear when that harvest is potentially abundant – you sweat like mad and so does your cool drink (condensate beading profusely on your glass).

See Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2: Water-Harvesting Earthworks for more on this, including a table helping you estimate your condensate volume.