Customer Reviews

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands (Vol. 1): Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life And Landscape

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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Note that the title of this book includes the words Drylands. This book is primarily about catching rainwater for use outside of your house, i.e. watering the plants. The illustrations and descriptions are based on life in Arizona. There you want to catch all the rainwater you can get and get some use out of it rather than simply letting it flow down the street. At this purpose, the book is excellent. This is the way it should be done but rarely is.

My own experience with catching rainwater is quite different. I was living out in the swamps in Louisiana. We had plenty of water. In any direction you cared to go there was water. Average rainfall was about 65 inches per year. In fact when we went to town we went by boat.

So why rainwater? Pollution. The water that comes to Louisiana has come down through a thousand miles or more of agricultural runoff, sewage treatment plants that may not have been working so well, feedlot runoff, and God knows what else.

We used a system kind of like his drawing on page 71, but there were certainly no cactus plants around. But note carefully item number 4 in his components, what he calls a first-flush system. This is a system to vent the first few gallons of water off the roof away from the storage cistern. If you are going to drink the water it's best to get rid of the bird droppings and other stuff that accumulates on the roof between rains.

He doesn't describe the first flush system but from the drawing it looks like it might be some kind of a commercial device. Ours was a home made affair. A two foot long piece of gutter was hinged so that it stuck up in the air, held there by a spring. When this gutter was up in the air, the water dumped into a bucket. When the bucket got full it pulled the gutter down against the spring and then it directed the water into the cistern. After the rain stopped you emptied the bucket and it sat there waiting for the next rain.

Great book, not only about how to collect rainfall, but about the general problem of the shortage of clean water.

This is a wonderful book. The author has a friendly, conversational writing style that makes the book a pleasure to read. I was familiar with most of the concepts and we own other resources that describe them, but this book pulls them all together in a clear and comprehensive manner. Design principles presented here are inspiring and simple to follow, with enough technical information included that you aren't left wondering how you should go about implementing the author's suggestions. Even high-rainfall areas have droughts; the concepts presented in this book will help your plantings survive and thrive with less input from you. Rainwater is much better for plants than either city water or well water(which tends to have a high mineral content). We live in an area that averages about 18" of precipitation per year and incorporating many of the strategies described in this book has meant that our plants are much less stressed during the dry seasons and require significantly less watering than they otherwise would. These principles work, and doing even a little is much better than doing nothing!

This is a very wide-ranging introduction to the concepts of rainwater harvesting which is both very informative and personally fun to read. Brad Lancaster has filled the pages with many examples of his own accomplishments and those of other like-minded people and organizations. You don't
have to live in an area of restricted rainfall to put these tried and true concepts into practice. Matter of fact, the more rain you receive each year, the greater latitude you'll have in making a difference.

If I lived closer to Brad's part of the country, I'd definitely consider myself a groupie. This is the best overall intro to the potentials and benefits of rainwater harvesting I've found. It helps us reconfigure our relationship to the fullness and richness of life lying unseen there in plain sight.
It's a big sweet piece of an urgent puzzle.

If you're an absolutely new to rainwater harvesting book, this book may be of some use. But if you understand the basic ideas of rainwater harvesting, I'd skip this book.

Perhaps volumes 2 and 3 are more specific. Volume 1 tells you about the meat, but doesn't give it to you. I suspect the meat (i.e. useful detailed information) is in volumes 2 and 3.

You may prefer Art Ludwig's the New Create an Oasis with Greywater. I found it had the same basic information on rainwater harvesting as Volume 1, but in addition, has detailed information on creating a greywater system.

I can't say enough about what a good reference this book is for all gardeners/farmers, and even for people who don't garden. Water is such a precious resource. Mr. Lancaster did extensive research for this book inspired by Mr. Phirri in Africa. I first heard of Mr. Phirri in an online article by Mr. Lancaster. He was arrested several times for stealing water from his neighbors during the dry season because he still was able to grow and harvest vegetables and such when no one else could....and more importantly perhaps, his well never ran dry. The thing was he wasn't stealing water. He was harvesting it in unique ways he had to prove. It caused folks from all over the globe to go see how a simple African man could manage this after he convinced a judge to come to see his system for saving water. He became known as "The Man Who Farms Water."
Mr. Lancaster took what he learned from Mr. Phirri and researched it back home in Arizona to see if these ideas/techniques could be used anywhere else. What he and his brother learned caused even the city of Tuscon, Arizona, to change their ideas and practices in order to save precious water for its citizens. This book explains all of that and more. The one drawback to the book may be that it lists sources only for Tuscon, but it was that area for which it was written. What it shows may be used anywhere, though. It goes much further than just putting out barrels to collect rainwater. You may find yourself wondering why you didn't think of that yourself. Some of it completely contradicts what we have always been told about how our property should be graded, for instance. It may be my most valuable gardening reference, but more importantly it may be the most valuable resource for preserving potable water for the world

After buying our first home in a southwestern desert city, I attended a series of free landscaping classes offered by the city's water department. In an off-hand comment, one lecturer mentioned grading a landscape to make some use of rainfall. I thought that was a great idea, but I had no idea how to implement it, and the example the lecturer had given was on a very small scale. I made no changes to our landscape at that time, but a "seed" of an idea had been planted in my mind.

More than twelve years later, a friend suggested attending a lecture at our local library on rainwater harvesting. The teacher was Brad Lancaster. I purchased his book, read it, and discovered many useful ideas about how to achieve what I want - a self-sufficient, alive landscape to replace the barren rocks and dying shrubs that currently surround me. I want to make better use of the 80,000 gallons of water that fall on my small urban plot in an average year. Now I have actually picked up a shovel and made a start!

My favorite principle from the book: If you leave (to escape circumstances or discouragement), you will only be taking your problems with you. Stay and find a solution; afterward you can leave. Then wherever you go, you'll be taking the solution with you instead of the problem.

I received this book from Amazon this evening, and was able to page through it in about an hour. (Not a great sign). I'm hoping Vols 2 & 3 will be more informative.

The book does a good job of surveying various approaches to harvesting rainwater, but it left me wanting a lot more detail. There is a good section on the math of rainwater capture which I haven't read closely yet. The book fits nicely into a permaculture ethic of working in concert with natural systems, designing with stacked functions, and reducing external inputs and outputs. The writing style is clear and understandable, and it's filled with helpful diagrams.

Be aware, however, that the book has a decidedly arid-climate perspective. As someone who lives in the Mediterranean climate of Northern California (wet winters and rainless summers), some of what he recommends doesn't seem applicable. For example, many of the earthworks schemes rely on setting plants in low basins to capture rainwater. But with our extremely wet winters, I think this might mean root rot for many plants -- even native ones. I was hoping for some information about adapting water-harvesting earthworks to my local climate and soils, but I was disappointed.

One personal peeve: The author spends way too much time in a preachy-toned introduction to the why's and wherefores of rainwater harvesting and water conservation. Duh! Not only is this unnecessary (if you've bought this book and are actually reading it, you're likely already part of the choir), it's written in an especially irritating way. My favorite example is a little picture of a pig sucking water from the ground through a straw, which is supposed to illustrate "our" draining Mother Earth of her natural abundance. As someone who likes pigs, I take offense. (Yes, I'm being sarcastic). The tone is way too black-and-white, and it comes off as condescending. It's too bad that this otherwise helpful and sensible book starts this way.

This book presents a good starting point for those interested in harvesting rainwater for landscaping and domestic use. It presents basic ideas of the process clearly with many simple (and sometimes entertaining) figures, pictures, and a number of real-life examples. Appendices in the book present more technical information for planning, etc.

I live in a state that is much wetter than Arizona, but applying some of the principles in this book has helped me work toward independence from the town water supply. This past year, the garden has been irrigated solely from rainwater collected off my roof into several rainbarrels. I'm currently expanding this system to over 600 gallons of storage... sufficient for my garden size.

The book refers to Volumes 2 and 3 of the series, neither of which have been published as of this review. These volumes are supposed to expand on the ideas presented in Vol. 1. However, it seems that the publication date for Vol. 2 keeps getting pushed back. This publication delay is my only disappointment.

Really informative book if you've ever wanted to collect your own water. My husband's complaints are that the author goes into paragraphs and half pages on what is in the next book, could've done most in just one book if done right, but then he wouldn't make as much money. Job security I guess. We've been researching for several years now on living off the grid out west in the dry region. Could totally go without drilling a well if done right, according to this book. Very common sense when you really stop and think about it all. Great book, going to order the next 2, but again, it's weird how book 2 and 3 are mentioned over and over again in book 1. Why not just write one book on the subject. Gives enough info that my husband is mad that he has to wait for the next volume to get the details about what the author is talking about in the first book, but he is totally captivated and loves the first volume.

This is an incredible study of a topic that most of us don't think about much, that is, how we are wasting our rainwater, and what we could be doing instead. This is required reading for anyone who cares about the environment.

Best, the book is highly readable, with excellent illustrations. I knew literally nothing about this topic before I read this book. Now I am a believer. The story of the African man who "farms water" is incredibly moving and actually brought tears to my eyes. I have already bought three copies of this book to distribute to friends and I will probably buy more! The author, Brad Lancaster, speaks on this topic around the country and I am looking forward to hearing him in person. There are two more volumes coming in this series and I am looking forward to reading those, as well.