Inhabitat

Dear Sirs,

I am curious about more technical information about that project. Are those devices allready available or at which status is that development. I am an German architect who is since ten years involved in post desaster assignments all over the world. This is a great idea. Please send me more information. In the moment I am in Sri Lanka for Post Tsunami reconstruction projects as consultant for big international relief organizations.

Regards, Werner Gronwald

This “low tech design” has been in use by humans forever. I first learned about it 20 years ago when I was in the boy scouts by inverting the rain-fly on my tent. It’s simply surface area with a run-off. It does work, and if it’s all you can muster then it might help you stay alive, but there’s no possible way it could sustain high volumes of people unless you start talking about covering kilometers worth of land with these.

Werner, you can do this with anything. It’s an extremely simple concept. IF you have enough water in the air, then it will collect on things when you hit the dewpoint. If those things on which it collect just happen to allow gravity to pull the water down, then it will flow down in to your collector of choice. The trick is that you have to collect enough dew for the droplets to roll in to each other and amass enough volume for gravity to break the droplets free – before they evaporate from your surface.

To test this, go jam 3 sticks in the ground in the shape of a triangle. Affix the plastic to the sticks and place a stone in the middle of the plastic so that it pulls the plastic downward. Check the bag in the morning before the sun heats anything up; you should see a little pool of water at the bottom of the bag. Once you’ve acquired water with this small test, it’s then just a matter of scale to generate the amount of water that you want. The more surface area, the more you will collect.

Christopher, The key phrase in your write up is “… hitting the dew point” and the associated “If” statements – “.. If there is enough water in the air” and “.. “surface area”. In all the above, the only thing that we can control appears to be the surface area.

Having never lived in arid or desert climates, I have trouble undestanding if this works in those climates. My general take is if the climate allows for dew point to be reached, then there is porbably not as severe a water problem as to justify this enormous investment for water “litres at a time”.

But an extension of this watair is if the panels themselves are PV panels providing (1) shade for people below, (2) generating electriccity during the day and (3) collecting water during the night, the cost may become justified.

Bucky Fuller evisaged that providing shade in hot places to the community in general with large geodesic roofs will increase productvity. I know for a fact that mindless hot climate saps your strength and motivation to do anything useful other than just talk about how hot it is.

Now we will run out of air instead of water.

Worse, I’d say.

Bottom line: there are not enough natural resources to sustain everyone on this planet.

AirVsWater – I think you understand that these devices don’t actually turn air into water, but rather extracts the water vapour from it? Thus; no air shortage for you or anyone else.

Subbarao Seethamsetty, The question is not one of abundance of water, but of clean, potable water. Direct from the air rather than from, say, the Ganges river, the water would be as clean as the collectors and container. There are many similarly wet places that would benefit immensly from this one easy tech.
Does this mean that the Boy Scouts can save the world by invading third world countries? Yech. That would be a real dystopia.

This particular method for capturing water from the air has been around for decades, it is taught in survival schools, and to sailors at sea. This is no great new invention. What I’d like to see is actual installations, rather than computer renditions, and actual data on how they perform. An idea is easy, making it happen is the issue. Seems like the slightest wind will blow these things away. Also, if you do get around to actually building any of these, I suggest you don’t put them under any trees. I’d really rather not have bird droppings mixed with my pure water. Solar stills, which have existed for decades, may be a better way to go for purifying poluted water, or extracting water from the ocean.

It is good that water supply is on the agenda and that new technologies are tried out to improve WatSan (Water & Sanitation) in developing countries.

The idea to use dew water is off course not new, but the trick is how to use it and where can it be applied, also on the long run.

More reading on for instance the website >> http://www.FogQuest.org

Some ideas are more feasible than others. Main problem is always, what we call “upscaling” or, how can good ideas be used by the millions that need it.

It is our experience, that only ideas that can create an income for some people, are feasible in the end.

To get wider attention in the WatSan sector for this idea, i would advise to make an info page about this idea on our website >> http://www.watsan.org

Paul van Beers
WatSan Consult
Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Website >> http://www.handpump.org

Website >> http://www.WatSan.org

Are there any companies that are manufacturing the WatAir? What are the names?

I want to get the way of contect to the men who have invented watair.
they are Josephcory and Eyal Malka.
Please give me their Tel,fax,E-mail .We want to buy the products of watair for getting water.
Thank you!

Perfect idea.Please send me more information .Thank you!

As a kid I saw a TV documentary that showed beetles in the Sahara Desert using their own bodies as dew collecters. If a beetle in the Sahara can do it I think we could do it, too.

Lack of resources should not be a problem, using them efficiently is.

The idea of “dew catching” is not new.

As producer of rachel knitted PE monofil cloth, we supplied our cloth for similar purposes.

Some years ago I heard of projects in Yemen and in Chili.
Please have a look at http://www.fogquest.org.

The structures of WATAIR look nice and that is a plus to the end-users.
They don’t have to start designing, it exists and looks great.

The problem with these marvellous inventions is if they are not commercially viable they will end up as some college report in some archives of some university for ever and will never become popular.

WatAir is an amazing and innovative device that has, so far gone massively underutilized. However, the potential it wields is tremendous. It has the capacity to solve the current world wide water crisis due to its uniquely effective nature.

we want to buy wateraie, it is very useful for us . please tell us how to get it .thanks!

Jessica

Send information

I keep hearing it… and I’ve been thinking the same thing, surface area is the problem.
But instead of making it bigger, there is another way to make the surface area greater without increasing its size: make it a fractal!
If you think about it, your pyramid design would lend itself perfectly for a Sierpinski Triangle type fractal design; but inverted.
I would take the upside-down pyramid that you have, and then like the S. Triangle, subdivide it into 4 smaller pyramids. Put another upside-down pyramid attached to the first in the middle, so that its corners connect to the midpoints of the sides of the main pyramid. Repeat this process until you end up with a shape that resembles the S. Triangle except that instead of the removed sections, you have more nets there that resemble successively smaller versions of the first. Work would need to be done to determine how many times the process should be repeated. Either the cost exceeds a limit, or a it no longer makes a noticeable increase in performance.

Since they will all drain into the main pyramid, there is no reason to add more drainage tubing, but there may be a need (for structural reasons) to include more piping to keep the pyramids shape.

I’d love to see how much it increases the water intake, my bet is you go up by a factor.

How much and from where can I purchase?