The Fog Catcher

Necessity is the mother of Invention.

Nearly one million people living in Lima, Peru now have access to clean, safe water. An innovator named Abel Cruz decided to do something about it and started collecting water from fog. A very simple idea to collect the water latent fog with meshing and conveying it by gravity to cisterns.

According to an article in Nature World News, “The “fog catcher” is composed of rectangular sails made up from a net typically used in plant nurseries. The structure is about 4×10 to 4×8 meters in size supported by two vertical poles. The device collects water via fog that passes through the net, which forms water droplets. The accumulated water will then be collected via a gutter that’s connected to a storage tank.”

Watch this video and see for yourself that with a little ingenuity one can overcome adversity.

Photo courtesy of Fellipe Abreu

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.