Handmade interactive tower designed to collect water in rural areas

Here's an interesting article on water collection from air.

‘Warka Water’ offers an alternative to this dramatic situation. It is a vertical structure with a special fabric hanging inside to collect drinking water from the air by condensation. The triangular mesh structure is made of natural materials such as junco and can be built by the village inhabitants. The structure, which weighs only 60 kg, consists of 5 modules that are installed from the bottom to the top and can be lifted and assembled by 4 people without the need of scaffolding. The tower can collect up to 100 liters of drinking water per day. The Goal is that by 2015 the ‘Warka Water’ to be realized in Ethiopia.

That's pretty interesting. I would like to learn how to make it and create miniature ones to put next to establishing trees and on top of the chicken pen.

I found a few similar things where they harvest water from fog

a solar powered minature water collector

That article would've been a thousand times better with a link to plans to DIY because the whole idea is low tech anyway.

If you want to help your establishing trees, do what is mentioned in the Fog article:

Fog or dew collection is an ancient practice. Archaeologists have found evidence in Israel of low circular walls that were built around plants and vines to collect moisture from condensation.

From the looks of the area it is intended for, trees would make much more sense. These would only be temporary, trees could last forever as they self-replicate.

Anyway, what they do not provide is shade. How fast does the water need to be harvested so as not to evaporate as fast as it is collected. I would guess there is an enclosed container. It would be nice to know a lot more about how it works. Perhaps they could redesigned to act as a tree starter with the tree growing from/through the centre. The unit would act as a waterer as well as fence. The farmer they showed on their page would benefit from trees and new farming practices more than a bit of water. This tower could act as a starting point for that as part of a system towards perma/polyculture.

I agree with Len on the trees. Once established they become their own dew collectors. They're usually best placed in low spots, so that they can benefit from flash flood water. Sometimes those low spots are salt pans. In such areas, the slopes just above the pan tend to be the best watered.

This thread is a water capturing idea that turns the vegetation into the collector and stores the water under a rock mulch. It contains several good links. https://permies.com/t/31304/desert/Rubble-Rock-Fog-Wall-Swale

As in the picture this is looking very beautiful by size & looks. As you mention in the post that it may collect 100 liters of drinking water per day. That will be very helpful for rural area peoples. But I think there is one thing missing on the system is that shading system. That will save our water from evaporation. So I will suggest you to add it if not.

I find it interesting that despite having five full size versions, they offer no actual performance results, just a speculative "100 liters".
It looks to me more like an artist architect came up with a look they could market than a practical design.

Has anyone attempted to build one of these yet? This has been earmarked as a summer project here to try as it seems exceptionally viable for collecting the water and then simply piping it to a storage compartment for usage.

While they have built some already, it appears that they are attempting to keep the implementation details secret / guarded for funding purposes with these African countries. While these work well in areas of relatively low vegetation and low'ish humidity, these would be amazing in areas throughout the US in terms of water independence and obtaining more pure sources of water for both human and animal consumption.

If anyone has any results / experience / anecdotes I'd very much appreciate it. I think we're going to work on figuring this out in a big way here.