Sunday, June 13, 2010

Reduce, Reuse

As he was getting the swamp cooler ready for another summer, Steve had an epiphany - we could put the swampie runoff to good use watering our strawberries!

For those unfamiliar with the swamp cooler concept, I mourn for you because that means you live in the sticky icky east coast. Allow me to explain.

In Utah we have basically no humidity. There are some downsides to this, like the fact that our fingers crack and bleed spontaneously in the winter, but it also means that we can cool our homes using the magical powers of humidity. Basically, a swamp cooler (also called an evaporative cooler, but I think that's a far less interesting name) is a giant wet sponge that sits on the roof of your house. A fan blows air through the sponge and as long as your home has decent circulation (meaning that we keep our windows and doors open all summer - fabulous!) the evaporating air actually cools your home. It's basically like your house is doing the sweating for you. Magic. If my explanation isn't scientificy enough, feel free to check out Wikipedia's.

So now instead of just running through the gutters, the runoff from our swamp cooler collects in a water storage barrel and when the barrel gets full a little pump kicks on automatically and waters the strawberries.

That's my handy-dandy husband for you!

1 comment:

kitzkazventure said...

So, my computer screen is broken and my favorites was not accessible so I got miserably behind on "all" my blogs....so somehow I completely missed that you are adopting again! Yippee for you and the new Morningstar-in-waiting! I had to chuckle at the needing a criminal record check from Kaz for China? Seriously! We are adopting again (from Ecuador this time) and I have not heard that one yet! oh my! The things we go through but oh so worth it! So happy for you all....looking forward to following along! :)

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