Mountain Stitchworks

Use the rain chain to bring the water from the gutter to the barrel.

It's legal now ~ hard to believe it wasn't at one time ~ catching rain water that is.  Last year I set up a very simple system to catch rain water.  It was very successful, albeit not without a little work every time it rained ... which actually isn't that often in the summer in Colorado.  It was fun to go out in the rain and empty the basins I had placed under the rain gutters into old trash cans.   And it made it possible for me to grow a garden with a limited supply of water.


This year I've decided to continue with tradition and step it up a bit since one of my trash cans burst from the water freezing in it (that was the metal one).  The other one has been converted to a recycling container.  Here I plan to document a bit of the process starting with what I've found today and that is an amazing source for re-purposing containers ~ including food grade plastic 55-gallon barrels, right here in colorado.  The website is colorado zero waste.  




So far the "ingredients" necessary to make this rainwater barrel are:

Large food grade barrel

tin snips (to cut the gutter)

A bent arm gutter piece

screen (to put over the barrel opening)

PVC pipe (maybe a 3" tall by 3 - 4" diameter) to fit into the top of the barrel and hold the screen)

Spigot (3/4" full flow) that I can attach my hose to

Plummer's tape

Over flow hose & attachment of some type

Possibly a pipe to attach a second barrel to.

3/4" & 3" (or 4") drill bit

As I was turning over last summer's compost pile I was pleased to find a few remnants of last year's g diaper liners in the last phases of compost.  I feel very pleased that Zane's old diapers aren't filling up some old landfill,  but have instead been either past along to new little babies or composted.

New questions have be roused for me with regard to Norwex Products after reading the article Nano & Biocidal Silver put out by Friends of the Earth.

I need to research it more, but I think I remember hearing that Norwex uses colloidal silver in their products.  Although after a brief bit of research on colloidal silver, it seems it is an ingested substance.

My question is, Does Norwex use colloidal silver in their products and if so how?  And then I need to figure out if colloidal silver is indeed Nano Silver Technology?  And if so I need to go back to Nano & Biocidal Silver (the article) and research its sources.

5/8/2010
Seems that Norwex doesn't use Colloidal silver.  The silver is 'embedded in the fibers and cannot be removed'.  I found out that there's a science person I can call,  that's my next mission.