File this under "permaculture hacks that don't work" or "haven't worked yet," or "it's a string sort of a thing"--but the idea I saw in a kinetic sculpture and it can work.
Let's say you have an air conditioner (or let's say your houseguests up on the 3rd floor, under the slate roof,
should be forgiven for running one) that drips into a gutter that leads to the garden--but the tiny trickle is mostly evaporated by the time it's down at ground level.
It might optimize things more to have a collection cup that is on a balance wiht a counterweight, such that at a critical moment it tips over and drops a bulk of
water down, instead of doing it one drip at a time. That way most of the water will travel in a pack (safety in numbers, much lower surface area to volume ratio) down the spout and into the garden.
Here's a crude drawing-ish thing:
| |
|~~~|-------------XXX water and counterweight, partway full
|____| A TTT
X
X
X
/
/
/
/A TTT
/
/
/
\ /
~~~\ /
!\ \/
! \ /
! \/
!
!
!
!
!
I hope that makes sense in ascii.
Again, the total amount of water condensed and then distributed to the garden is the same, but you lose much less to evaporation.
The other problem is the lack of oxygenation problem--and that might be solved by a
Sepp Holzer-like gluggluglug-inducing feature somewhere along the drain pipe...
The other option is run a hose, a narrow plastic tubing (1/4") but we ran out of that and I don't want to buy more from a store, I'd rather use materials lying around.
The other problem is how to set this up without falling out the window...but that sounds like a job for Superman!
