Description
All you need is fog. Here’s how to extract water from the air. It’s a low tech, cheap way to get fresh water as it become increasingly hard to get in many parts of the world. The cost of building a ‘flag-catcher’ is about USD$500 and can capture between 200-400m litres of water per day, a saving of almost 60% of water usage. In desert areas like the Peruvian coast there is a lack of water and rain, but there is a lot of fog occurrence, mainly on the top of hills or high places. So went to Peru to see the pioneering efforts of locals who have built ‘fog-catchers’ and are reaping the rewards. A ‘catcher’ is a construction of stems made of metal, bamboo or ‘ Guayaquil’ wood and a tight-knit mesh of raffia in between them. The little water drops caught by this mesh are collected by gutters and flow through an organic filter into a tank. So far the water isn’t drinkable, but is used for watering crops which provide an income for families living outside Lima.