Our initiative began with a simple thought: how could we leverage the tens of thousands of tents strewn across refugee camps to capture potable rainwater for displaced families? At LivingWaters Systems, we use the roofs of a family’s place of residence to collect renewable clean water, reducing their dependencies on scarce, unsafe surface and groundwater alternatives.
Our Solution
Our solution comes in the form of a collapsible, portable, rainwater harvesting system. Rainwater is the cleanest source of naturally occurring water, and by allowing families to collect it from their own roof, they are able to maintain a clean source of water right at their doorstep.
Although rainwater is naturally clean, we include basic screening filtration process to remove any detritus that gets washed off of the roof. A mesh guard sits on top of the gutter to block leaves, sticks and other larger detritus, after which the water then encounters a 2 stage filter at the entrance to a collapsible storage container.
Despite the far-reaching potential of rainwater harvesting, very few solutions exist in refugee communities which are becoming increasingly overcongested and where open water sources are easily susceptible to contamination. Current-day rainwater harvesting gutters can only be permanently mount professional installation, are prohibitively expensive, and cannot be installed on fragile surfaces like the fabric used in today’s relief tents.