Rainwater harvesting will be one of the most important systems we put into place on our homestead. With that in mind, I’ve really fallen in love with Brad Lancaster’s work. After viewing his videos on youtube (I’m a youtube dork) and looking over his website, we’ll be purchasing his books. Below are excerpts from his site about his books:
Turn water scarcity into water abundance! Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, is the core of the complete three-volume guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement sustainable water-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community. This book enables you to access your on-site resources (rainwater, greywater, topsoil, sun, plants, and more), gives you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empowers you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional, and water-sustainable water-harvesting landscape plan specific to your site and needs. Clearly written with more than 40 photos and 115 illustrations, this volume helps bring your site to life, reduce your cost of living, endow yourself and your community with skills of self-reliance and cooperation, and create living air conditioners of vegetation growing beauty, food, and wildlife habitat. Stories of people who are successfully welcoming rain into their life and landscape will invite you to do the same!
Book specifications:
- ISBN 978-0-9772464-0-3
- LCCN 2005907763
- Published by Rainsource Press
- Distributed in North America by Chelsea Green Publishing Company 1-800-639-4099
- Distributed in Australia by Tower Books 02-9975-5599
- $24.95
- Paperback
- 8.5″ X 11″
- 200 pages
- Over 150 illustrations; index; bibliography; six appendices including patterns of water flow and erosion, water harvesting traditions, calculations, plant lists, worksheets, and resource lists.
- Foreward by Gary Paul Nabhan
- Printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper
- Categories: water harvesting, landscape design, ecology, sustainable strategies
- Release date: November 2005
- Official month of publication: January 2006
Earthworks are some of the easiest, least expensive, and most effective ways of passively harvesting and conserving multiple sources of water in the soil. Associated vegetation then pumps the harvested water back out in the form of beauty, food, shelter, wildlife habitat, and passive heating & cooling strategies, while controlling erosion, increasing soil fertility, reducing downstream flooding, and improving the quality of the water and air.
Building on the information presented in Volume 1, this book shows you how to select, place, size, construct, and plant your chosen water-harvesting earthworks. It presents detailed how-to information and variations of a diverse array of earthworks, including chapters on mulch, vegetation, and greywater recycling so you can customize the techniques to the unique requirements of your site.
Real life stories and examples permeate the book, including:
- How curb cuts redirect street runoff to passively irrigate flourishing shade trees planted along the street.
- How check dams have helped create springs and perennial flows in once-dry creeks
- How infiltration basins are creating thriving rain-fed gardens
- How backyard greywater laundromats are turning “wastewater” into a resource growing food, beauty, and shade that builds community, and more
- How to create simple tools to read slope and water flow
- More than 450 illustrations and photographs
Book specifications:
- ISBN 978-0-9772464-1-0
- LCCN 2007943019
- Published by Rainsource Press
- Distributed in North America by Chelsea Green Publishing Company 1-800-639-4099
- Distributed in Australia by Tower Books 02-9975-5599
- Paperback
- 8.5″ X 11″
- 448 pages
- Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper
- Categories: Rainwater harvesting, Water harvesting, Landscape design, Ecology, Sustainable development, Do-it-yourself technology, Sustainable stormwater management, Erosion control
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