Methods for fog and dew water collection?

To me the best use of that system would be in places where the water supply is uncertain. If a dam goes, or the something happens to the Colorado river, what do you do? There could be a situation where millions are out of water, but there is plenty of electricty left.

You could also power the thing from wind turbines, potentially. That would be a great combo for short to medium term disasters in some areas.

If something happens to the Colorado River or the dam breaks, you aren't going to have much excess electricity in some places.

Sue

"Methods for fog and dew water collection?"

I intend to do some experiments this winter on that. My first collector will be a mylar emergency blanket hung from a stretched cord with clothespins, tilted at an angle into a container.

I would also like to do two side-by-sides to determine if vertical or an angle is best for fog collection. I'm wondering if vertical will allow both sides to drip water.

Sue

Good point...

Of course, the alternative, storing water is cheap and easy, & requires no power.

> it can produce up to 5 gallons a day wich is more than enough for a small
> family to survive comfortably.

I take some issue with that. There are too many dependencies to make a blanket statement like that. For a person to survive comfortably, does one have drinking water, bathing water, cooking water, and washing water (clothes and dishes)? If one has infants, are bathing and washing optional? Are you considering flushing the commode?

I have trouble thinking a family of four (small family?) could survive comfortably on five gallons of water a day if there is any heat and any survival effort involved. I'd be happy with five gallons a day for the two of us, but I'd be very put out by running a generator 24 hours a day, and so would my neighbors, I'm sure. Of course, I'd have to get gas somewhere during the disaster - and I assume no electricity.

And I take the "up to five gallons" with the same grain of salt I give "up to 12 hours on a single charge," "range up to 5 miles."

shrug - to each his own.

We had great success on the Channel Islands with vertical window screening. Unfortunately I don't remember exact quantities of either screening size or the water yield, but it exceeded our expectations. Something like five gallons overnight from a relatively small screen.

Anyone who is in a water-challenged situation and still wants to flush the toilet is beyond my comprehension.

But I do agree that more water is better. Those minimum figures of a gallon per person per day is just for very short-term situations. If the situation even extends to two or three weeks, that amount won't even come close to what you really need.

Sue

This thread is on the right track ... but the challenge is a bit bigger than people are thinking.

Let's suppose you are really thirsty in an urban environment, and you have no access to bottled water or any "normal" form of clean water. Therefore - you need to scavenge water from some other source. Then you have to purify it.

If you get the water from a place like a pond at a local park, then probably a water purifier might work fine. Same thing goes for water from hot water heaters.

But if you only have pools of water sitting stagnant in the city, then you've got the possibility of real contamination. Pollution ... chemical contamination. I'm not sure that a still will really separate all possible contaminants.

Pete