The First Rainwater - New Desert Homestead Catchment

Excelente proyecto!

I'm in the Sonoran Desert, traditionally we dig what are called tanakos or tanks.
It's simply a great big hole in the ground next to an Arroyo or dry wash.
This allows the flow to be shared between its final destination and the tank itself.
These tanks are traditionally used for cattle and are dug on a grand scale.
However, one can do a Shear wall version which is lined for future irrigation or consumption.

Have you added Bentonite clay yet? Will be a great little oasis once you can hold the water for a long period...

Hello South Africa I so miss the accent ❤

Great amazing project, thanks for sharing it.. you have inspired me to want to do the same in my old mans land in Kenya.. ill comtact you with my progress and challenges. All the best

If you’re not storing that water in a tank or immediately distributing it to farmland, all you are doing is evaporating water back to the atmosphere. When you block water flow with an impermeable compacted clay dam, the rate of evaporation will be more significant than the rate of absortion. You blocked that wster from feeding downstream watershed.

Might be a very nice little patch to plant something in 5 years!!

Mooi man!

Sterkte met julle water opvangs. War doe julle dit asseblief

I've done some rain catchment experiments and what I have come to understand is that most locations that don't have enough water really just don't have enough water storage

Thank you for taking care of Mother Earth. . Thank you for taking care of Mother Earth. .

They also plant trees and bushes where the puddles are ...the recent atmospheric rivers happened helped save many resivors..

Not enough people know the joy of catching rain.

Love this!

Thanks for showing us your beautifull face
All the time!

Before what Hamas did to them, you should know what Israel did to them for over 100 years. They illegally declared the zionist state and took over all of their homeland palestine.They did not give palestinians a chance to fight a balanced war. They have totally hidden the truth and just rely on propaganda and false flags to further their agenda of amassing land and resources for their greedy selves.While Zionists got all the aid and weapons the Palestinians were not even allowed to have drinking water unless the blood thirsty nation of so called chosen ones, allowed it. Even now, they force prisoners to drink highly chlorinated water to slow poison them.among the many atrocities they have been executing on the unarmed people for 100 years. The zionist nation was founded on bombing tha hotel that housed british and ar soldiers and resident . they labelled them as terrorist, all the while they were the real terrorist terrorizing and killing and massacring the indigenous Palestinians.

I dug a trench (swale) in my front yard, and made a burm all almost to the edge of my suburban home. I started a food forest all around the trench, moles have come and eaten earth worms there now so they are helping to get the water deeper into the soil, painful as it seems. So far I planted 3 trees (fig, white mulberry and lemon) as well as Cape gooseberry and fatbush and if it survives asparagus from seed. Planing to have a patch of Jerusalem artichokes as well. Some how people are blind to saving water this way. I am planing rain water into drums when I get them.

In Africa the set up mist nets on the hills above towns for rain catchment

We don't really have dry gullies in the Pacific NW but every new neighborhood, whether industrial or Residential has to put in water retention ponds. This mitigates the water run off from all the asphalt etc... It also allows the local aquifers to constantly refill.
If the South West doesn't get its act together by building catchbasins for all the water running off the rock hard ground (basically asphalt) they are going to try stealing water from the PNW.

If you need any help let me know for next year. 😂

You from SA. Congratulations 🎉for making the dam.

50000liter= 50 x ton
Very small volume water.
Only one truck volume.
Maybe 20 times volume must need.

where is this?

Thank you for taking care of Mother Earth. 🙏👍

And everything downstream of you that needed that water can just die?

Brilliant, everyone add a custom dam to their property. Freaking idiot.

Walking in the pond also helps sealing it just with the clay that is on site.

I was about to ask whether it is in the Karoo and you answered my question! Is it in the Klein or Groot Karoo?

What breed dog was that? I used to have one that looked identical to it but I never knew the breed.

You mentioned three overflow options, but didn't say/show what one you used. I couldn't see where you had used any of them.

Wow, 17mm wouldnt even wet my soil any further than 30mm down without run off, you must have a very shallow topsoil to get the run off you needed.

Use available water 💧 in planting &growing tall .spreading shadows various trees suitable for the Soil&climate of the regions on large scale. Create catchment areas for clouds and rainfall 🌧.

A dam? thats weak. Farmers have successfully used terraces for centuries. Its a much better way to do it

✅

"Dam It" best product name in product name history

world class content

Why is water in the Southwest typically brown once there is enough rain to create a flow? Because it's full of soil. And why is it full of soil? Because every time it rains water flow erodes the ground it runs across. So what's the end result of such a pond? It will eventually fill up with the soil, carried along with the water. Well, that's my prediction after having witnessed such stuff on my own property.
So how could this be prevented? There is no easy answer, but looking at Beaver dams may provide some clues. Beavers don't build 'just one dam', but over time create numerous dams along water courses. The effect of that is that water never gains 'destructive velocity', something that makes flash floods so challenging. Just how destructive flash floods can be is demonstrated in the book "The Secret Knowledge of Water" by Craig Childs, a book about 'water in the desert'. The subtitle claims: There are two easy way to die in the Desert: Thirst and drowning.
On my next attempt I'd begin to slow the flow higher up and let water seep down step by step, which may just create a series of saturated, green areas along the way. All along one could install pipes to catch 'overflow' and guide those pipes into an actual water tank, out of which sludge, which will inevitably collect, can be drained periodically (something that can't be done from a pond, where it keeps collecting at the bottom). Just a thought :- )

is en Fortschritt, nach 1000 Jahren drauf kommen, ein Erdwall könnt Wasser speichern - sowas tolles - unglaublich.

I have a very small lot in a Southern California suburb. The soil is hard clay. I wanted to grow a lot of tropical fruit trees, but they require good soil drainage. Impossible normally with this soil. So I dug out most of the back yard to about 3' and got rid of it, many many truck loads of clay. I laid out a channel 50' long in an "S" shape and about 6' wide and lined it with concrete block retainer walls. Then I filled in the rest of the yard with amended soil: some of the clay and a lot of beach sand mixed with compost and peat moss. I planted dozens of fruit trees on both sides of the channel. I dug out a 6' deep by 3' wide hole under each tree to ensure good drainage for the roots. These fill full of water up to 3' deep and then the excess spills out into the channel. Also, all the rain water from my roof is drained into the channel as well. It holds 3,000 gallons of water when full. After the rain has ended and the soil drys out, the water retained in the channel penetrates into the soil on either side, watering the trees. This is important because our City water supply comes from the Colorado river and is very salty. Other than the occasional rain, most of the water for the trees comes from City water. Combined with the normally poorly draining clay soil, evaporation of City water causes a heavy buildup of salt in the soil. My micro reservoir system uses captured rain water to flush out the salt and keep the trees hydrated for weeks after it rains. Later, I also dug out a few 6' deep by 3' wide pits in the channel and filled them with sand and gravel. These provide some additional water absorption so that the channel doesn't fill up as quickly when it rains and deep hydrates the soil with excess water instead of it just running off into the City storm drains. These deep pits are where the excess salt flows to. Now I capture nearly 100% of rain water from my property. I decorated the channel with river rock (small boulders and pebbles, to make it look like a dry creek bed. It is full of water tolerant plants that won't drown when submerged for weeks.

Nice.

Plant acacia

Build a dovecote. You already have the water source now. A dovecote will give birds a place to roost that is safe from snakes, and you wont have to bother with managing the birds. They in turn poop in the dovecote, which is nitrogen rich and can be shoveled a few times a year and given to the earth to reconstitute it. (Or you can build it in the path of the water runoff so the poop area is where the water runs below it, which means the rains' runoff will naturally wash it away when it does rain.)

Newspaper and De lux zai holes will also hold water longer for vegetation, especially in combo with demilunes and half-buried clay pots that have tiny holes in the bottom while also having a lid to prevent contamination or evaporation. The pots will drain slowly. Roots grow around them, helping to insulate it more and slow the water further.

Coppicing trees instead of cutting them down encourages new growth on an established system so the soil biome doesn't die off and so the tree can be farmed over and over for millennia (Japan does this to avoid deforestation, and in Italy there is a 4,000 year old tree that is managed by one family & it's healthy even today because of the selective cutting and burning done on it). The selected stems / trunks that are cut provide more moisture barrier on the ground, habitat for wildlife, material to decompose & also line the water bed, and also encourage new greenery to sprout from the soil. And can be used for fuel & building supplies also. And any burnt wood is more moisture protection and nutrients as biochar.

At the bottom of your spillway, make sure you have rocks there so it won't erode the ground. Checkdams, with rocks on the lower end, will help in both slowing the water flow and keeping it from eroding as it flows over.

Plant trees and brush and grasses on berms to hold them in place and to prevent wind & water erosion while also having your swale hold and collect the rising water. Berms and swales direct the water in combination with checkdams and spillways.

For vegetation, the three sisters method improves the soil and also increases what can be harvested at a given time, & can extend the growing season.

Dovecots are thousands of years old and have worked across the world. They didn't originate in one single place but rather across the world. They are still heavily in use today in desert areas in the middle east. Berms and swales are being used more today in desert reconstitution and on farms as a noncorrosive way to improve the land as well as in managing waterflow. Checkdams placed periodically down mountainsides is being used in Saudi Arabia to regreen unarible land along the foot of desert mountain ranges. That land is already being used for farming, as the method is working despite it being among the hottest places on earth.

Newspaper zai holes are being used in West Africa with up to 500% increase in crop yield while expanding the greenery where the desert was encroaching, de lux zai holes are being used in East Africa with 500% to 2000% increase in crop yield. It increases when combined with demilunes.

Ngolo holes help turn & enrich soil and water retention--also being used in Africa.

Canari island of Lanzarate is using convex digs with half-moon walls made of picon lava rock that collects moisture and gives it to the ground in capillary gravity-fed action, which is helping them with agriculture in the blackended volcanic wasteland. The half-moon rock structure blocks the prevailing wind and some sun exposure.

Beavers are also a natural way to regreen along an old dying river. They burrow, causing more inlets for new growth, and they dam, causing water to hold. It attracts wildlife, which encourages new growrh and improves the cycle.

Last thing: Moses West is a guy who built some machines ten years ago that capture moisture from the air and collect it into a tank. The machines are solar powered, perfect for desert areas. Can't affect the climate overall, cuz the hotter the world gets, the more the oceans and waters evaporates. If it's too hot, naturally the water can't fall. His company takes orders for building the machines. He's deployed them at Flint Michigan to help with the water crisis there, and internationally to help in the aftermath of hurricane and flood disasters, and also to help the military have water when they're deployed in different locations that have no safe water, or any water at all. The water is readily drinkable and can be used immediately for farming. Others have similar technology, but his are pretty cool cuz of their sizes & water-holding capacity.

👍👌👏

How many can do this before the rivers go dry?

Once that pond fills, could you not install a pipe about 2 feet below the top and develop a second pond below

Really cool!

Beavers, nature dam builders.

In which country are you??? Australia??