Super Slim Rain Tanks

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These are manufactured by Contain Rainwater Systems and have a few cool features; they have two ways that they can be mounted with one side having a rock looking texture and the other side having a modern look. They were simple to mount, even on this odd brick surface. There is a factory installed tap that a plastic spigot can thread into, and they can be linked together for larger capacity. They come in two colors and are in stock in quantity and available for prompt shipment. Please email about cost. If you mention the term " Emergency Water Storage " in your email you will receive a special introductory price. I am interested in dealers outside of California who wish to buy on a wholesale rate. Please contact myself or Eric.

Click the photo to enlarge

They are FDA approved safe for potable water and in addition to being an excellent option for rainwater harvesting where there is very little room I think they make a great option for emergency potable water storage. Large round barrels take up too much storage space, and these are designed to mount to a wall, out of the way. I am recommending that earthquake country people have one of these for each member of their family mounted in a cool dry place, such as a basement or garage. Each tank holds around 70 gallons which can be rationed to a comfortable three month supply per person. Water stores for a long time if not contaminated by an outside source but we suggest they be drained and refilled once a year.

We installed four in a breezeway on a house in Yorba Linda. The homeowner liked the idea that the 6'6" height provided added privacy. They are for use in case a large Earthquake disrupts Southern California water supply ( which is going to happen at some point ). As I have made other posts about The California Katrina and the Central valley delta system levee danger I will not belabor the point again but I cannot encourage people strongly enough to have some sort of collection and storage set up for an emergency water supply.
Eric Konechny is the United States division chief and designer of these tanks and I can personally attest to the fact that he will go above and beyond to help me get these tanks to you promptly. My business Rain Water Systems is an authorized distributor of these and other Rainwater Harvesting Products and my role is to not only test and install these systems but to train other small businesses in sales and installation and web marketing. Soon we will offer more instructional articles and DVD's as well as low cost websites purpose constructed to help market these products. These times require creativity and diversification. Trust me, in two years every scruffy gutter guy will be a rainwater harvesting expert. Not because of passion, but because the homeowner will be asking more and more for quotes on these products as it seeps into the conscious. The victors will be the companies that get experienced now and one way to do that is to offer these products to your clients now. Get a head of the curve.
Any rain gutter installation company is invited to call me on my cell and if you are in Southern California I will bring a display package to you and explain how it works and how I have been able to sell large systems. Gutter supply houses should consider hosting a seminar on harvesting rainwater; I will bring my educational display trailer with a pump, first flush device and different sizes of tanks from these new super slimline to a selection of round tanks from Bushman. I will go out with you or your customers on your first site evaluation or estimate and discreetly assist you in planning the system and pricing it. If you order your product through me I will come to your first installation and train your crew, for FREE. Who else is going to do that our has the experience, relationships and portfolio to back it up?

erick@contain.ca

Rain Gardens

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Rainwater harvesting systems can and should be tied into an irrigation system " zoned " to feed food bearing gardens. This is working well for us at our home in Southern California. It is true that we cannot rely solely on rain water as we are only collecting a small patio roof and we don't have enough room for a large system, but we have a pump that pulls the water from our rain barrels and the barrels are refilled with city water when they get depleted via a float switch. We enjoy fabulous vegetables and herbs and fruits and there is a certain magic from cultivation and using the food grown at home to create good meals.

This is a conceptual drawing of such a system; the cut away view inside the tank is meant to show the float switch. The overflow is directed into the grass to be absorbed into the soil, an outlet from the tank leads to the pump with feeds a irrigation manifold.

Our harvest currently is potatoes, green onions, strawberries, oregeno, sage, rosemarry and thyme. The mint just grows like mad and we may have to remove it.

We are waiting for bell peppers, tomatoes, corn and blueberries, grapes and squash and jalapenos. A summer variety that will yield more than we can eat. Here are some more photos of our rain garden; notice that we removed all the grass and have gravel between the food beds and the childrens play area is covered with wood chips. The only water that is used in our back yard is for the raised food beds, and a good portion of that comes from our rainwater harvesting system. It is important to live as we talk; to do as we encourage others to do. I personally will never have regular grass again. When the economy recovers and things aren't so scrunched we are going to do a total front yard make over and plant many more herbs and eliminate the grass there.

In the back ground you can just see the gutters that collect water from our roof.

The Tank Fed Food Beds are offered as a service to our clients along with the Gutter Gardens and rainwater harvesting systems. We are offering turf removal and drip systems and constructing patio container gardens for those willing to add rain barrels and catchment systems as the primary feed of water.

The Gutter Garden

Rain Water Harvesting; How not to do it in Los Angeles

" Progressive gardeners who haven’t yet bought their barrel are made to feel wasteful and negligent for failing to acquire the latest in an endless series of products designed to save the planet. Thanks to relentless marketing, rain barrels are enjoying a potent dose of moral buzz that is fast turning them into a 21st Century version of the Great Tulip Mania. "

Disclaimer; I appreciate the efforts of those who have tried to create low cost and do-it yourself systems and do not mean to sound mocking. That being said, I think that the proliferation of make-do rain water harvest systems will ultimately create a bad impression on those considering using this technology. Further, the cheap rain barrels promoted by the various officials in Los Angeles are seen more and more often discarded as they do not have the crucial insect netting, an overflow and they are ugly. They look more like industrial vats used for storing chemicals and they are not what the average homeowner would want to see up against their house in Southern California. I would further argue that small cheap rain barrels are not green as they are often thrown away into landfills after a season or two.
As I share a common goal with other activists who want promote this micro-economy ( or mega trend ) I wanted to present this; How NOT to Harvest Rainwater in Los Angeles.

Example #1

This is a well crafted system with a solid block foundation, high quality plumbing fittings. My issue is that if this were placed on the side of a Malibu home the neighbors would at the least not be inspired to do a rain water harvesting project in their own yard. In fact, they probably would file a complaint. In certain parts, people might mistake it for a still making Moonshine. It is just not aesthetically pleasing.

This is contestant number two.  This tilting, industrial looking contraption is placed right next to the entry sidewalk.Perhaps eventually the bushes will grow around it.

Example 3

Plastic bottle downspout leads to rain barrel. Just...ick.

The average small home in L.A. yields 8,000 gallons, minimum, per year of rain water. A system should start at one thousand gallons, be designed to be aesthetically pleasing and be the primary source of irrigation water for the landscaping. A float valve is used to keep enough water in the tank(s) between rains to allow them to be used year-round with a water conserving irrigation design.

1,100 Gallon cistern in El Cajon, Ca

620 Gallon Slim Tank, Orange, CA

 Nothing is without its trial and errors.  
If the drought continues, the costs of these systems will increase dramatically.


Rain water harvest systems we have installed can be viewed here and are now located in Orange, Yorba Linda, Tustin, Anaheim, La Canada Flintridge, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, North San Diego, Hollywood, Fountain Valley and Newport Beach and MORE! We are fully licensed for seamless gutter work. Rainwater harvesting locations recently in La Mesa, National City, Encinitas, Escondido, Carslbad, Hollywood, Temecula, Point Loma and MORE.

First Flush Devices

The results of water quality tests. First flush verses no first flush.

The center pipe is a " first flush device ". It contains the first few gallons of rain water that have a higher bacteria content and solids that may create sediment in your rain water harvest system.


The effects on water quality are non-existent if your intention is to drink the water.

Our subjects were one home with half round gutters, a high quality gutter screen and no first flush and a home with regular ogee style gutters, no screen, but a first flush device.When using a standard test kit used to detect coliform bacteria we found that tanks connected with first flush devices and those without both had contamination. Coliform bacteria are those nasty little critters that make you have to run to the bathroom.
We used kits supplied to the missionary teams at www.peacewater.org to test two rain water harvesting systems installed in Southern California. The test was a simple pass or fail test. If the bags turned black, they were unfit for human consumption. Our subjects were one home with half round gutters, a high quality gutter screen and no first flush and a home with regular ogee style gutters, no screen, but a first flush device.

First flush devices are effective at minimizing sediment in rain tanks.

I always recommend a first flush device as part of a complete system. In this economy I am sensitive to the economic realites and I suggest the customer start with as large a tank as they have space for, as the MATH usually overwhelms are homeowners ability to store water.

By that I mean to make rain water harvesting be practical you need larger storage systems, to make it through dry months. However, few homeowners have the real estate, or space, to store the amount of water that comes off your roof. Therefor, the amount of water coming off your roof will be greater than the average ability to store.

That basic equation again; if you have ten inches of rain per year and you have one thousand square feet of roof your yield of rain water will be about 7,300 gallons per year ( and 7,300 gallons per year is 20 gallons averaged per day over 365 days ). So, a storage system of about one thousand to three thousand gallons seems optimal for a home in a climate that gets ten inches of rain per year. As a large above ground system may between one a five thousand dollars my suggestion is that the homeowner look at their rain water harvesting system as modular; get the largest tanks and best rain gutters you can afford and add a pump, first flush, gutter screen later if that is required due to budget constraints. If you " daisy chain " multiple tanks together be sure to offer the clients optional ball valves between each tank. This allows individual tanks to be cleaned or moved without having to drain the whole system.

Then we let the bag sit at room temp for two days. The results were disconcerting, because the tech team at www.peacewater.org are trying to see if this technology can be used to provide drinking water for people who have no reliable source of clean water.

The results of the Hach tests were showing coliform bacteria in both samples. So we proved the water is unsafe to drink without filtration, but technical data done by other entities indicate that first flush devices help reduce other types of measurable contaminations including solids that create sediment inside large rain cisterns or tanks.
For emergency filtration of rain water for drinking I recommend you purchase a Sawyer type filter and have clean buckets ready in kit, or have stove and fuel to boil the water.


As far as the water quality of rain water for gardening it seems obvious that the plants love the chemistry of the bird dropping and other biomass that make up the sediment of a large rain tank. My final opinion is that the priorities should be having large tanks first, a filtration system secon and a distribution system, like a pump, last.

There are companies producing high quality first flush devices for sale such as www.rainharvesting.com. I really admire their under ground first flush diverters and the technical data they have assembled.

Rain Water Harvesting; The Math

The math on rain water harvesting is very important if people are to embrace this technology. A main stumbling block in my sales is that people assume that there is not enough rain in Southern California to warrant investment in the harvesting of rain water. Allow me to demonstrate that this thinking is wrong.

Please consider;
1000 square feet of roof yield 623 gallons of water per inch of rain.
The  whole calculation goes like this; Roof area (ft square) X rainfall ( ft ) X 7.48 gal/ft+ total rainwater ( gal ).

For example, if you want to calculate how much rainwater in gallons falls on your 55-by-80-foot ( 4400-square-foot) lot in a normal year where rain fall averages 12 inches. the calculation would look like this;
4,400-square-foot catchment area X 1 foot of average rainfall X 7.48 gallons per cubic foot = 32,912 gallons of rain falling on the site in an average year rain.
Credit on the above data.


So one of the key concepts is to live within your site's water budget.

That means using your properties annual average rainfall as the basis of what plants get used in your yard. Excess water collected from the roof is then used ( in theory ) to water the plants that require more than the natural rainfall ( such as fruit trees and vegetable gardens ) so that for the ornamental landscaping no further use of city water is required to have a lush and attractive yard.

Consume less water on your property than falls on your property in an average year of rainfall.

Rain water helps powers this food garden in San Clemente Califonia. 

Currently some cities offer rebates towards the implementation of rain water systems. You can help facilitate this by contacting your representative and letting them know your town wants those rebates too! Solar is far more expensive and out of reach for many into today's harsh Southern California economy.

Please consider the following;

1. Rainwater ( and hail, sleet and snowfall ) is delivered to us free of charge, eliminating the need for costly distribution systems. Did you know that 20% of all energy consumed in California is used to transport, treat or store water?
2. Rainwater is the highest-quality source of irrigation water
3. Rain water is salt-free and can help flush plant damaging salts from the root zone in alkaline soils
4. Rainwater is a natural fertilizer containing sulfur, beneficial microorganisms, mineral nutrients, and nitrogen
5. Rainwater harvesting helps reduce utility bills
6. Rainwater harvesting reduces flooding by reducing flow to streets and storm drains
7. Rainwater harvesting reduces nonpoint-source pollution of stormwater
8. Rainwater harvesting provides a water source when well, surface, or municipal water is contaminated or unreliable ( such as after a major Earthquake )
9. Water harvesting helps utilitys reduce summer peak demands for water and reduces the volume of wastewater that needs to be treated at water treatment plants
10. Water harvesting is fun! The food from my garden tastes better than store bought food and we have emergency water storage

This is our own family  rain garden. This year we produced onions, potatoes, strawberries, rosemarry, mint, thyme, basil, oregeno, sage, carrots and more. We just planted peppers and tomatoes for the summer growing season.

Using a three thousand square foot home in Yorba Linda California as  a model we conclude that if that home harvested just one third the home into a rain tank or cistern system they would have 8,700 gallons yield per year.  These are facts. Here is a link to the rainfall data; click here. That is 23.83 gallon of  fresh water available for use every single day.

That is why larger systems make sense.

More from our own raised flower beds this year;

lettuce and oregeno

Potatoes ( foreground ) mint and green onions

Tomatoes and fresh basil from the garden with mozzarella cheese ( yummy! )

Rain Water Harvesting Storage Tanks Mitigate The Big One?

Part of these blogs posts objective is to share some of the information I learn, being in the water business. The other part is to sell rain barrels. I do believe that you should consider the following information irregardless of your intentions about buying rain barrels. If you live in California, please read;

Currently there are raging debates about the delta Smelt, the California levee system and if a canal or aquaduct should be created to bypass the fragile levees. How does this effect Southern California people? Well, imagine water faucets in your home that don't work.

We know that a major Earthquake will eventually happen, and that it could destroy the levee systems and allow sea water to contaminate our drinking water. Imagine 20 million people in Southern California without drinkable water. We also know that major, even historic cuts to Californias water infrastructure loom in the immediate future. There are no plans to address any of these issues, and given the feckless nature of our political class, things will only get worse.

Of course, my interest is in getting people to change the way they think about rain and rain gutters. I confess I have an agenda. I asked Jeff Helton, the regional sales manager at Bushman rain tanks what it would take to get the average Southern California person serious about collecting and storing rainwater and his answer made sense. He said, " this tract that I live in in Murietta Valley almost didn't get built because they could not get an allocation of water. New rules say that before you can build you must plan for the water. Once they start building again the water rationing will return in full force and get people off the fence about rainwater harvesting. "

Then, as I usually do I did some research and found that in an average year, water shares were issued for eight times more water than existed. Check it out yourself;

The reality is, poor planning, incompetence and a dismal failure of leadership has set California up for a epic disaster and everybody has to do their share to reduce and conserve water, for our own sakes. We have to have our own micro-infrastructure ( our homes ) yield water to decrease the dependence on a government that fails to plan, fails to act or is planning on failure. They seem to prefer endless crisis orientated realities rather than meeting these challenges head on. We all agree that the economy will not be sound until there are homes being built, but the catch 22 is that in reality there are very few homes that can be built with our infrastructure.

key thoughts: micro-infrastructure. perma-culture. self-reliance



Get this, when you read about foreign banks and Wall Street tycoons getting trillions in so called bailouts remember; " Next year water infrastructure projects and programs are expected to see massive budget cuts as President Obama has proposed slashing infrastructure spending at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) will see nearly $400 million cuts and the Clean Water SRF will be cut nearly $600 million; according to Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, these cuts in SRF budgets reflect a return to a more "sustainable level"; states worry that cuts will make it difficult to fund future infrastructure upgrades; reports have shown that the United States faces a $500 billion shortfall for water infrastructure funding over the next twenty years ".
Check it out here.

If the levee situation is not addressed, if more storage is not built then there can be no new construction in  California. As the above text from homeland Security indicates, the money got spent elsewhere. These decisions are going to result in massive economic hardship and potential loss of life when the big one hits and those of us in Los Angeles look to the feds to save us, like they did in Katrina.

Every home in Southern California needs to be equipped with a rain water harvesting system with at least 1000 gallons of capacity. It is socially responsible to get rid of your grass, plant native plants that are conditioned for our desert climate. Every home should have a basic gray water system where the water from their laundry discharge is fed through pipes that water food bearing gardens.
I say 1000 gallons minimum based on a typical rain year in Anaheim. You need a large capacity to carry over through dry months, to be prepared for a water disaster. The math suggests that if 1000 square feet of roof were harvested, in a typical rain year in Anaheim California that roof would yield 8700 gallons.

IMPORTANT VIDEO! PLEASE TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO WATCH.

The Cycle of Insanity: The Real Story of Water from Surfrider Foundation on Vimeo.



Supporting links;
http://www.greendiary.com/entry/earthquake-in-california-could-cause-another-katrina-in-next-50-years/
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/node/8640
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/water-infrastructure-budgets-see-massive-cuts-2012

Water Storage = Earthquake and Emergency Preparedness

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Earthquake and Emergency Preparedness

Earthquake Preparedness - Water is the Key to Survival! 

Loss of safe drinking water is deadly. Most individuals will begin to experience side effects from dehydration after 36 hours. Starvation can be delayed by several days or weeks provided there is an ample, safe water supply. At the bare minimum, you should store one gallon, per person, per day, for seven days . A three-week supply is ideal. After an earthquake, city water is vulnerable to contaminants through ruptured pipes and adulterated filtering systems. Do not take adequate water supplies for granted. If you store an ample amount for your family beforehand, you've already greatly increased your family's chance of survival after an earthquake.

I noticed with interest this picture and quote about the conflict in LIBYA;

''Residents live on canned food and rainwater tanks,' he said. Gaddafi's brigades storm residential areas knowing that they won't be bombed there. 'People live in total darkness in terms of communications and electricity.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368633/Libya-war-US-chopper-shoots-6-villagers-welcomed-Air-Force-F-15-crash-pilots.html#ixzz1HNPdVWgv

So, this isn't Libya; I get it. But we do live in Earthquake country and the vast majority of people I question do not realize that their tap water depends on electricity. No power = no water. The majority have no food storage beyond whats in the freezer and on the pantry shelf.  To those who think that the government will be there on a white horse to protect them should remember hurricane Katrina and the horrendous suffering of those who choose to be in denial about the impending disaster they were warned about.

So in this post Japan, post Christchurch, post Chile earthquakes we should all take stock of our capabilities. We decided to fill this 67 gallon rain tank with potable water and bolt it to the garage wall. We have three months food rations and an additional 42 gallons of water in storage, as well as protection, first aid and battery powered communication chargers, lights and radios. We also have 10 gallons of propane fuel, 40 lbs of charcoal, fertilizer and fast growing leafy vegetables in storage.

 Consider ordering one of these slim tanks to mount inside your garage as emergency water storage. They are $268.00 each plus shipping if applicable and I pay all sales tax.

Here is what FEMA has to say;

How Much Water do I Need?

You should have at least a three-day supply of water and you should store at least one gallon of water per person per day. A normally active person needs at least one-half gallon of water daily just for drinking.
Additionally, in determining adequate quantities, take the following into account:

• Individual needs vary, depending on age, physical condition, activity, diet, and climate.
• Children, nursing mothers, and ill people need more water.
• Very hot temperatures can double the amount of water needed.
• A medical emergency might require additional water.

In more remote communities or those typically affected by wildfires a water storage system may be the only water that is available to save your home. Larger tanks can be equipped with a fire hydrant outlet that the pumper trucks can hook up to.

Saved water can save your home, and maybe even your life.