Go Green Expo - L.A.

We went out to the L.A. convention center today for the Go Green Expo. We had a very nice time there and learned about some great new products and even found some companies that we might be able to use in fixing up our newly acquired house.


Probably our favorite find of the day was the Vapur water bottles. We had been looking to replace our old Sigg water bottles with something free of BPA. These bottles are super cool. They fold completely flat when they are empty, are easy to fill up with water, have a sport cap for easy drinking, and you can even fill them half way with water and stick them in the freezer over night so you have ice cold water. We are already falling in love with our new water bottles, and the 2 and 1/2 year old is a huge fan already. He loves that he can squeeze the bottle to get the water out rather than having to tip the water bottle to get water out - much easier for the little one.

Rainwater Collection

As we have begun to get our rains I am once again giving thought to what the best way to collect some of that FREE water and store it for use in watering our landscape and even washing the car is. The options are seemingly endless if you have the space to dedicate to storing the water, but we don't have a huge yard and I'm not so sure I want to tear it up to bury tanks or give up otherwise usable space to store above ground tanks. I am looking at a few storage options that would fit along the side of our house where we have a rather long walkway that is about 4 feet wide.

Of course before I can decide on a system I first need to determine just how much water I will be able to harvest from our roof. I was rather surprised to find that our area gets about 22 inches of rainfall annually, part of the shock for me was due to the fact that almost all of our rain is in the winter months. That is a fair bit of rain to receive over a short period of time in an area that is so dry that the water generally just runs right off the yard without really soaking in during rains or even a good watering.

Anyhow, for those of you interested in storing water in a fairly tight space two options in collection tanks I have found are the Waterwall Fatboy and the Rainwater Hog. Both are modular (you can connect multiple tanks together). The Rainwater Hog is the narrower of the two at only 20” wide x 9.5” deep x 71” tall but it only holds 50 gallons per tank and a cost of about $400 per tank (accessories are extra). The Waterwall Fatboy is the largest I have found holding 650 gallons per tank and measuring in at 7'6" long x 6’7" high x 2'4" deep at a cost of about $1200 per tank (accessories are extra).

I did also find a 214 gallon rainwater collection system that measures 69" long X 22" deep X 45" high. I didn't however see an option to add additional tank(s) to this system. The complete rainwater collection system is currently selling for about $1200.

Of course smaller rain barrels (about 55 gallons) could also fit along the wall, but I could only fit so many of them before I run out of space. And unlike the Rainwater Hog traditional rain barrels have a larger footprint and also aren't designed to allow stacking. I guess once I calculate out how much water can be harvested from the roof I will know just how much water I would need room to store, but until then I can think about all the great options out there for collecting and storing such a precious resource as water.

Bottled Water

I will admit that sometimes it is really nice to have a bottle of water beside you, but I really hate to think of throwing out all of those plastic bottles. Yes, I know they can be recycled and yes I do recycle what I can, but to me that doesn't mean it's alright to discard stuff just cause it can be recycled. Recycling is the third part of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. We should always first try to reduce what we use, then we should reuse what we can, and only after those two have been done should we recycle what is left.

For today's little project I took an old glass soda bottle with a screw on lid and cleaned it up and removed the label from it and now I have a lovely glass water bottle to keep on my night stand or on the table while we are eating our meals so that there is always water on hand to refill our glasses with. I like it so much that next time I buy soda I may keep the bottle again for keeping fresh lemonade and other good stuff in.