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.
Rainwater Catchment

How Much is Water (Conservation) Worth?

How Much is Water WorthHow much is water worth?

The question in itself is a huge discussion among corporate leaders and governmental agencies throughout the world. With increased demands of growing populations, droughts which plague many regions globally, and the lack of conservation, many are asking “how do we protect a common resource throughout the world, while providing a necessity of life for all of its inhabitants?” According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “We have a genuine, burgeoning, boundary – crossing crisis over water.” PepsiCo. CEO Indra Nooyi says “The world water crisis is one of the most pressing challenges of our age.”

Companies are concerned as farmland suffers and the demand for water mounts. What is the solution? According to Fortune Magazine, “Some say: make people pay more for the most precious commodity on earth. “When water has no value, even low cost technology will never get implemented on a large scale.”  Furthermore, the article deems that water is so inexpensive that there is no incentive for conservation. Water needed for drinking, cooking, farming and basic life supporting necessities needs to be available to all, while there should be limits on non-essential use of water with cost increases to offset conservation practices and technologies.

The city of San Diego, which has experienced a drought not seen before in our lifetime, is investing money in large scale desalinization systems, paid for, in part, by a tiered water pricing system. While many think this to be controversial, the need is there, without some sort of rethinking how we manage our water supplies, there will be little water to manage.

While rainwater collection is not going to be the final answer to water conservation, it certainly is a simple step that can be adopted relatively inexpensively, and with positive results on a small scale. Think about the money that can be saved by our municipal water districts which can then be redirected to other methods of supplying water. If the city of San Diego, as well as other cities, would realize the value of water and encourage rainwater collection on a larger scale, we could conserve over half the amount of water being wasted for non-essential use.

Rainwater Catchment

Is Your Engineering Firm Well-Versed in Rainwater Collection Design?

Ken Blair, RainBank LLCIs your engineering firm well-versed in rainwater collection design?

With rain water collection systems becoming more accepted, many engineering firms are being asked for rainwater collection designs to meet the demand of both commercial and residential systems. But how much experience does the engineering firm have in storm water management and rainwater collection? Does the firm use consultants from the industry to help with their design? Does the firm belong to the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association (ARCSA), or another association such as the Cascadia Green Building Council?

The members of these organizations are a great resource for engineers, architects, designers, microbiologists, contractors and suppliers who are part of the industry and have experience that will benefit the firm in their design. There are long-time members of ARCSA that have brought the industry to where it is now. With their experience, a well designed, operational system will meet the intended use that the customer is looking for.

The proper design of storage, filtration, disinfection, and conveyance of rainwater is essential to a system’s success. Unless the engineer has experience in rainwater collection design, many industry standards can be overlooked. The plumbing code has written standards that ARCSA helped write, along with ANSI. ARCSA accredited professionals have to meet ongoing education credits in order to stay active in their accreditation.

RainBank Rainwater Collection Systems offers consulting and seminars to both engineers and architects and recommends to consumers that they check with their engineer or architect on their experience with rainwater collection.

Rainwater Catchment

Rainwater Collection Helps Mitigate Urban Storm Water Runoff

Federal Way Washdown_RainBankLLC_webWith less vegetation, more square footage of impervious surfaces, and more population density, cities contribute to the bulk of storm water runoff. Rethinking how we control storm water in our urban environments is essential to the health of our bodies of water.  During large rain events, a sewer system can be overwhelmed with runoff, causing intentional releases, with pollutants entering our rivers, lakes, bays, and estuaries.

The use of on site infiltration is mandatory for new construction, along with other practices such as swales along our roads rather than raised medians.  Green roofs, green areas within our cities and the use of rainwater collection all have a positive impact on storm water runoff. Common sense approaches to storm water within our cities is crucial to the health of our environment.

Rainwater collection for commercial construction and residential not only helps mitigate storm water run off, but also helps protect our water supplies by using rain water for irrigation, toilet facility, and other uses. The city of Federal Way in Washington state implemented rainwater collection for its new school maintenance facility by using rainwater for school bus wash down during the school year, and during the summer uses the collected water for irrigation.