1. Water Harvesting
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2. The First Half of Our Agenda
1. Check In
2. Best of Last Week: water
3. Story Telling: Collecting water in the
old days
4. Water Score
5. Contour/Swales
6. Building A-Frames & Bunyips
7. Ponds
8. Harvesting Water in the Cities
*****BREAK*****

3. Let’s check in!
How are you feeling today?
Did you sleep well?
Did you have a great breakfast?
Are you ready to learn?
If you are ready, say OUTLOUD:
“I’M IN!”
as a small commitment to being
intentionally here today.

4. Best Of Last Week
My favorite part of the day!
Let’s share what we thought was the
“best” of last week’s readings and
viewings and other comments.
Click HERE to go to the Google Doc!

5. Story-telling is another
great way to remember
It’s what most of, if not all of, our ancestors did.
In the comment box below, I would like to hear
how you got your water when you were a kid.
(For me I had Fairbanks water, but when we left town, that’s when finding water was
important and fun.)
You can also tell how your grandparents got water
if you want.

6. What is your water score?
Click HERE to find out.
Now I want you to imagine.
Imagine that it’s 2050 and there is no more
gas/oil/power to send water to our faucets. What
would you do to get water to the house you are in
now?
Type your responses in the comment box.

7. So how can you get water
for free?
True story: I’m working with a client right now
who can’t afford her $85 a month water bill here
in Eagle River anymore.
She needs a different system. She’s around 70 years old, so she can’t do it herself and
she can’t pay to have it done. I’m not sure what will happen. Can you just turn off
your water to your house without the city coming to see what’s going on?

8. First, you have to capture
it before it gets away.
There are several ways to do
that, but the Permaculture rule
of thumb is:

9. Slow it,
spread it,
sink it!

10. With the A Frame
Marking you can mark off
Contour contour lines on your
field. Use stakes to
Lines mark these contour
lines and remove
Click here to learn how to build them as the ditch is
an A Frame. dug.
The spacing between
contours depends on
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are needed to see this picture. the steepness of the
ground, the drainage
qualities of the soil
and the amount of
rainfall in the area.
Source

11. Formula to figure out
how to space your
swales
Distance between swales based on steepness of slope.
Grade Distance
2% 1:50 30m 98ft 35% 1:3 8m 26'
5% 1:20 28m 92' 40% 1:2 5m 20'
8% 1:12 24m 78' 45% 1:2 4m 13'
10% 1:10 20m 65'
14% 1:7 18m 59'
16% 1:6 16m 52'
20% 1:5 14m 45'
25% 1:4 12m 40'
30% 1:3 10m 33'

12. You can also use a
BUNYIP
to measure contour.
Click here to learn how to
make a bunyip.
Now watch guru Brad Lancaster show how to use it. CLICK HERE

13. Digging
The ditches are 12” wide and 8-12” deep.
The steeper the land, the closer together
the ditches should be.
Contour On steep land the ditches may
be just a few feet apart. On nearly
Ditches flat land, they may be 65 feet apart.
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decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Source

14. Planting Grass Barriers
on a steep slope
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Source
Grass or other close-growing plants should be planted on the uphill
side of the ditch. This protects the ditch from filling up with soil
and prevents the soil from being carried down the hill by rainwater.
In fact, this pattern (holon) may actually build soil.

15. Planting Grass Barriers
on a steep slope

16. Here’s
a side
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view of
a
swale

17. Holding water in a swale
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18. Check damns slow it
And
catch
eroded
soil.
Source

19. WATTLES
(NET PATTERN)
You can also use willow branches (8”-12” in diameter) called
wattles for your check damn. They need to be 1/2 buried in a
trench so they stay put. The net captures debris coming down
the hill. (A beaver damn model) You can also stake them.
Source

20. Slowing
Spreading
Sinking
These are also called fish scale swales
Source

21. So how would this work
in the tundra?
Could you use contour ditches to drain water off?
What would that do to the tundra? I’ve seen what air
boats do in the Tanana River flats, what four wheelers
do, even what snow machines do:
Permanent swampy tracks.

22. Intervention
• So I asked my mentor, Rick Valley, about the
“burden of the intervener” -- once you intervene, you
are responsible for that system.
• I wanted to know how I would know if a system
SHOULD BE intervened upon. His answer was,
“TAPO” (Thoughtful and Protracted Observation)
• So before you jump into anything big, do some
observation, test a small portion. If it likes being
disturbed, you should be able to notice.
• I continue to worry about being too Anthropocentric.

23. Here’s Tim Myer’s Farm
in Bethel
He is not farming on
contour, but perhaps the
fields are positioned toward
the sun. They don’t look too
wet, do they?

24. Bringing the water
to where you need it.
Conserve energy by making ponds at the
highest point on your land as possible.
Use gravity to water your
gardens or chicken coops
or dog water bowl.

25. Building ponds
Find (any time you can take waste out of the system and reuse something, you are using
the 3rd ethic: return the surplus to the system)
1. Food grade barrel
2. plastic kids pool
3. Wool blankets made after 1980 (sheep dip)
4. Old plastic pond liner

26. Or, just dig it!
1. Line it with old carpet, so rocks don’t
poke through,
2. Cover it with an EPDM Pond liner,
3. Cover the liner with gravel.
4. Make sure there’s at least a foot of
edge before it goes deep.

27. Inoculate
Get a turkey baster and get bacteria from
a working pond.
Then add fish to eat
mosquitoes.
A stagnant pond doesn’t
really help the system.

28. Check out Sepp Holzer’s Farm in Austria

29. Check out Sepp Holzer’s Farm in Austria
Sepp used
contour to build
his lakes high in
the landscape
and uses it to
water his farm
below. He did
use a bulldozer.

30. What about the cities?
You can still harvest water easily.
Here are some examples:

31. Underground Storage
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See the rain falling off the corner of the house?
They have four plastic
This is at O.U.R. Ecovillage near Vancouver BC
cisterns under the ground at
where I visited last spring.
each corner of the house.

32. Rain barrel storage
from your roof.
Source

33. If it’s for drinking, this is good for
cleaning what’s on your roof before
it goes into the tank..

34. Nancy Lee Evans’ Rain Water
Collection System in Homer
It has the
flush
system you
just saw
so that it
doesn’t take
the first bit
of The rain water then is
water off gravity fed into the
the roof. basement.

35. Nancy Lee Evans’ Rain Water
Collection System in Homer
This system
can also be
filled by the
Homer water
supply truck.
They have
bad water in
Homer.
Water flows out of the bottom of the
tank and through filters to the house
faucets.

36. So now that you’ve seen
these models and you start
wondering how your piece of
land could get free water,
read through these
principles slowly.

37. Water Harvesting Principles
1. Begin with long and thoughtful
observations.
2. Start at the top (highpoint) of your
watershed and work your way down.
3. Start small and simple.
4. Slow, spread, and infiltrate the flow of
water.

38. Water Harvesting
Principles (cont.)
5. Always plan an overflow route, and
manage that overflow as a resource.
6. Maximize living and organic
groundcover.
7. Maximize beneficial relationships and
efficiency by “stacking functions”.
8. Continually reassess your system: the
feedback loop.

39. Side note
There was a group of us here in Anchorage trying
to turn a church lot into some edible gardens.
We met with the church board and their biggest
concern was the cost of water.
What if every church would grow food on their
property with “free” water?

40. Next comes planning
1.What will the water be used for?
2.How much rain falls in a year?
3.How much water is consumed?
4.The area of roof or other catchment available?
5.What size storage can be built?
6.Where to place the storage relative to the
catchment and point of use.
7.Budget/resources available

41. And now your thoughts….
• Besides the cost of water, we have enough
water in Alaska. Why should we have to
worry about it?
Place just a couple lines in the comment box, you can
elaborate in your blog post this week if you want to.
I’m hoping that you know me well enough to give your
true thoughts, not just what you are expected to say.

42. TIME FOR A BREAK!
Go drink a glass of water!
• When we come back…….
GREY WATER &
BLACK WATER
PROCESSING
And we’re going on a FIELD TRIP!
WHOOT! WHOOT!