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Brad Lancaster: Guided Home and Neighborhood Tour Showcasing Integrated Harvests of Water, Sun, Wind, Shade, Fertility, Carbon, and Community, December 20, 2014 — Tucson AZ
December 20, 2014 @ 9:30 am - 11:30 am
Brad Lancaster, author of the award-winning, best-selling book series, Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, will lead this 2-hour tour of his home property and sites within the public rights-of-ways of the Dunbar/Spring neighborhood.
A portion of the proceeds from the tour will help fund ongoing integrated water-harvesting, native food-tree planting, traffic-calming, and education efforts within the public realm of the neighborhood. Tickets for this tour have sold out. Thanks, all! Please send an email to admin@harvestingrainwater.com if you’d like to be on the waitlist for this tour &/or notified in advance of future tours!
Some of the many features to be included in the tour:
- Low-tech, low-cost, gravity-fed (no pumps) potable rainwater-harvesting system providing for household water needs (including drinking water)
- Rainwater-harvesting tanks doubling as summer sun- and winter shade-harvesting systems, privacy/property fences, fire breaks, and more
- Passive, gravity-fed greywater-harvesting systems that reuse all household drainwater for safe irrigation of food plants that also help passively shade/cool buildings in summer while retaining the sun’s heat and light gain in winter.
- Flood-controlling, heat-island abating, and carbon-sequestering public gardens and orchards irrigated ONLY with on-site rainwater
- A tiny-house one-car-garage to cottage conversion resulting in a passively heated and cooled garottage
- Numerous strategies on how to maximize the harvest of winter sun AND summer shade in a way that reduces your water consumption, carbon emissions, and costs—these strategies work in ALL seasons, rather than working in only one season at the expense of others
- Sculpture that celebrates the seasonally changing path of the sun and the design of homes and gardens that make the most of the winter sun and summer shade
- Solar cooking, power, hot water, heating, lighting, and clothes drying
- Low-tech, low-cost, legal site-built compost toilet
- Self-regenerating living mulch machines that naturally bioremediate pollutants from street runoff
- Novel urban-wildlife habitat such as pollinator fences and shade screens
- Neighborhood-history sign project
- Neighborhood-scale water harvesting, native food-tree planting, traffic calming, and art—all celebrating and enhancing the story and potential of Place
For visual previews of some of these features: click to enlarge the images below, check out these sun- and shade-harvesting and water-harvesting & cistern set-up videos, &/or read this enhanced stormwater-harvesting blog post.
Also available at the tour will be signed copies of Brad’s books (including the newly revised and expanded second edition of Volume 1), as well as Rainwater Harvesting and Desert Harvesters t-shirts—all at holiday sale prices.
**The Fine Print**
- For the tour to be held as planned will require a minimum of 15 tickets sold by 7 pm MST on Thursday, December 18. All ticket-holders will receive an email by 12 noon on Friday, December 19, either to confirm the tour or to announce its cancellation. If the tour is cancelled, all ticket-holders will receive a full refund.
- Anyone wishing to cancel his/her ticket(s) must email us their cancellation request by 7 pm MST on Thursday, December 18, to receive a refund. After that time, your ticket purchase becomes a donation in the event you are not able to attend or sell/give away your ticket.
- Tickets are transferable (you may give/sell your ticket to another person). When you arrive for the tour, simply provide the name of the original ticket-purchaser and we’ll check you in on our tour list.
- After you complete your ticket purchase, you will receive a confirmation email from PayPal and be brought back to this page. Thanks for your interest and support!