Rainwater Collection Since 1994
When my wife and I moved out to Dripping Springs, Texas, we heard rumors about people who relied on rainwater collection for their entire household needs. We lollygaged around, slowly gathering information about rainwater harvesting "for sometime in the future." Then we had our well drilled . After one taste of that stinky water, our research efforts into rainwater collection went into hyper-drive. We frantically installed gutters, bought and set our tank, and ran piping hither and yon. In the meantime, all that lovely calcium was building up on our faucets, our sinks, and us. Our hair stood out like fright wigs. We always felt sticky, even right after a shower. And our clothes? We could stand our blue jeans up in the closet like mannequin bottoms. It would’ve been funny if we hadn’t started smelling so bad.
We plugged into our rainwater system in August, 1994, and after that our water smelled sweet and had a hardness of ZERO. Our hair relaxed. We could actually fold our clothes without snapping them in two. Best of all, our friends began to include us once again in their intimate dinner parties.
Of course, we started bragging about our water to neighbors and word spread. Some people wanted rainwater--The Gold Standard--but wanted nothing to do with the installation of the tanks, plumbing, gutters, pumps, and filters; so I began installing turn-key systems as well as assisting do-it-yourselfers. Before you could say "Holy Entrepreneur!", Tank Town was formed and I elected myself Mayor.
Since then I've installed hundreds and hundreds of rainwater collection systems here in the Texas Hill Country and sold thousands of our books and videos to eager do-it-yourselfers. In 1999, we bought eight acres three miles west of Dripping Springs and set up Tank Town World Headquarters, home to our award-winning bottling plant (where the first and only bottled rainwater in America is produced) and the Tank Town General Store (where customers can pick up necessities from a case of filters to a Grundfos pump). Tank Town is also home to a field of lavender and rosemary, six popular Purple Martin houses, and a resident flock of chickens, ducks, turkeys, and guard geese.
