All posts by Ken Blair

A rainwater collection systems designer and consultant, Ken has designed and installed residential and commercial systems, primarily in the northwest United States for more than 10 years and, in 2014, began consulting and managing builds in other states. Ken is an accredited ARCSA Professional Designer / Installer and Life Member, the Northwest Regional ARCSA representative and advisor to its education committee and is available to speak about Rainwater Collection Systems design and builds. Ken is a United States Navy veteran, having served on active duty during the Vietnam War era. A career entrepreneur, Ken created a new business focus with a commercial dive company in Hawaii in the mid 1980′s to respond to and clean up oil spills, oil spill equipment training, service and maintenance for the oil co-op service industry. Ken is passionate about having a positive impact on the environment and is also a founding director of BANK-ON-RAIN (2011-2014), whose mission is to create grassroots solutions for rainwater collection for consumption and agriculture in developing areas of the planet.

Survive Zombie Apocalypse with Rainwater Harvesting

walking-deadRainwater harvesting has made it to Hollywood!

A blog post from RainSaucers, performs a case study of how rainwater harvesting has become part of the background of the show The Walking Dead. The American television drama is based on the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman, portraying life in the weeks and months following a zombie apocalypse.

It’s interesting to read the case studies, broken down by season and episode, to see how the human survival instinct kicks in to ensure basic needs, like water for hydration, are met.

If you are affected by a zombie attack

Hopefully, your needs for rainwater harvesting aren’t brought about by a zombie apocalypse, but if it does, now you can be a little more prepared.

Read the full article here.

Buy Rainwater Harvesting Components Online

RBRWC917154With the recent rains in Washington State filling water tanks installed this Spring and Fall, RainBank Rainwater Systems is looking forward to 2016. RainBank Rainwater Systems gears are turning by continuing to provide first class designs, consultation, construction, and sales of the finest quality of components in the industry.

RainBank recently launched a shopping cart on our website. We’d like to introduce our first component offerings – Wisy Products, which offer pre storage products that will deliver the cleanest, aerated, raw water to your system’s storage, ensuring the finest quality of water. Whether your system is potable or non-potable, stored water should be free of particulate matter and aerated to keep bacteria to a minimum. RainBank is a dealer of Wisy products and offers ease of ordering on our website shopping cart.

RainBank offers filtration systems that keep routine maintenance to a minimum. RainBank recognizes that no one wants more chores to do around the house. In our designs, we consider our customers’ needs and desires, striving to keep our systems user friendly. Large capacity canister filtration, back flush devices, or typical filtration – we custom design our systems. RainBank will be offering these components for sale on our website’s shopping cart shortly after the first of the year and, as of 2015, have been adding them to our designs.

Many Seattle customers have been inquiring about buried tanks this past year. Because of this interest, we have researched different manufacturers of buried tanks throughout the country and Canada. We feel we have come up with the finest quality in this style of tanks and have worked diligently with manufacturers to be able to offer the best prices.

Large capacity fiberglass tanks that can be sized for commercial or residential systems are now part of the lineup RainBank offers. Smaller volume, poly tanks up to 1,800 gallons each can be connected together. RainBank has researched best practices for installation of manifolded, buried tanks and has the experience to get the job done right.

Pump RoomThis past year and one before, we have progressively put together the best-qualified personnel with an engineering department, commercial and residential plumbing department, sales department and administrative staff. We offer services from consultation, design, construction, and now online sales. With more than fifteen years experience and now with more products and services, RainBank continues to be the leading rainwater harvesting experts in Washington State.

King County Technical Changes to Rainwater Collection Codes

seattle-skylinePublic Health Seattle & King County On-site Sewage System Program Supervisor Lynn Schneider goes before the King County Board of Health to explain the adoption of reference numbers to align with state references to plumbing code for individual wells.  As rainwater collection moves into the mainstream, King County Codes are being updated for rainwater collection to align with the health code numbers.

Click below to watch clip (referenced media is from 1:03 to 1:07:

– Powered by Granicus

Live and Recorded Public meetings of Board of Health on 2015-10-15 1:30 PM for King County

No changes are being made to rainwater collection codes, just the numbers, so as to mitigate confusion between King County code numbers and state Board of Health documents. It represents a technical, not a policy change.