The RAINS (Rainwater Aggregation) project is proceeding very well and I am thrilled to say that we reached our target of having 25 systems in place before the raining season started in August. In the future, the RAINS team hopes to continue to expand the project to encourage more people in Yemen to participate in collecting rainwater.

First, we would like to reach more areas of the country. For example, the Social Fund for Development is currently working on community harvesting programmes in other areas of Yemen, and we feel that the RAINS system could play a part in this initiative.

Getting local businesses involved is another important step. We hope to encourage local construction companies to make a more conscious effort to include rainwater harvesting systems in their plans. For example, we would like to see houses being built with slopes on their rooftops for drainage holes on the same side as planned gardens.

We would also like to raise awareness amongst Yemeni families about collecting rainwater. We would like to educate households about how to use the RAINS system, or even develop their own rainwater collection systems and share their designs with others.

Ongoing co-operation with Sana’a University is also important, and we would like to see an active Sana’a University Water Resource Department working as part of the Faculty of Engineering. Yemen continues to face an extreme shortage of water and more solutions must be considered.

The journey has been a long one but it does not end. We hope that in the future we can work with a variety of stakeholders to provide rainwater harvesting solutions to more people in Yemen, and around the world.

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Greetings from Sana’a. The RAINS (Rainwater Aggregation) team has been working very hard since the last blog update and we are proud to announce that we have recently completed a total of three sites and selected three more sites in the Old City, the most famous part of the Yemeni capital of Sana’a. Earlier this month I spoke to Najiyah Alwazir from the Global Urbanist blog about the project.

There were of course a few challenges along the way. From the outset of the RAINS (Rainwater Aggregation) project we anticipated the challenge that most rooftops in the Old City are not single, flat units. That is, Old City buildings usually have multiple rooftops that are relatively small in size and are staggered at varying, inconsistent heights.

A second challenge is that many Old City rooftops have multiple drainage holes that remove rainwater to all sides of a building. This challenge involves lots of piping and creativity as we need to figure out a way to connect all the drainage holes without harming the building’s historic integrity.

The third challenge involves dealing with rooftops that are traditionally made of dirt. These have to be cemented, and in two cases so far, almost completely redone.

To address all of these challenges, the RAINS project has created a sort of cascading waterfall effect with higher, smaller rooftops draining to lower, larger ones, and into piping located on one or two sides of the building. The piping is also painted an earthen color that corresponds to the color of the mud brick houses.

We are very pleased with the results so far and are looking forward on getting started on the next sites.

Additional Benefits of the RAINS Project

Hello again from the RAINS (Rainwater Aggregation) team. I am pleased to report that there have been some additional benefits for the city of Sana’a through the implementation of the RAINS project. Our second Old City site recently uncovered a traditional masonry well that has been out of use for more than 40 years. The plan for this Old City site is to return water to the well again using an overflow valve from the RAINS system storage tank once it is full. This will be the first RAINS site to support replenishing ground water supplies as they were traditionally collected.

Additional benefits of work in the Old City have included fixing rooftops that may have collapsed with inhabitants underneath them (with workers waterproofing and completing the rooftops for the RAINS system many of the busy top floor rooms have been left alone by inhabitants). Repairing and waterproofing the roofs will lend years, if not decades, of new life to these ancient structures.

Further, after almost two years of maintenance neglect (thanks to the political and economic crisis that engulfed Yemen throughout 2011), investments by the RAINS project have encouraged inhabitants to follow up with their own additional upgrades to their buildings. Every household in the Old City that the RAINS team has worked on has implemented some type of upgrade such as fixing traditional doors and whitewashing interiors.

These are small but important steps as many Old City inhabitants have extended families that live elsewhere in the capital and they could easily move away, as many have, leaving behind decaying buildings in this wonderful living city. In helping them to preserve their houses, we are also bringing back the pride that people, including young people, have in living in the Old City.

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I am happy to report that we have started the Rainwater Aggregation (or RAINS) project in Sana’a earlier this year.

It has been a difficult journey to reach this point but work has now finished on two sites, which brings the total number of sites in Sana’a to three when the pre-project pilot is included. These three sites are located in the Wahda district of Sana’a and a couple of neighbors have already expressed an interest in the project and asked whether they might qualify for a RAINS system themselves.

Plans are now in progress for the next RAINS system in Sana’a’s historic Old City. While at this site we will initially be implementing one RAINS system, there is the possibility to attract neighborhood involvement and expand the system to provide water for one of the ancient, traditional gardens that are sprinkled throughout the Old City. As implemented here, the RAINS system may include an ambitious underground storage tank, as the project team attempts to develop systems to fit a variety of models and site requirements in Yemen.

Several international donor agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have already expressed interest in this project. A USAID-funded campaign, known as the Community Livelihoods Project, is planning to use the RAINS system in 25 primary schools and health clinics.

As the winner of the Philips Livable Cities Award project, we are already gaining momentum and expanding beyond the original concept!

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My name is Sabrina Faber and I am delighted to be the winner of the Philips Livable Cities Award 2010.

I am very excited to begin my project and over the last several months I have been testing the prototype for RAINS (Rainwater Aggregation in Sana’a). During the testing phase, in the space of less than 24 hours, we accumulated over 10,000 litres of rainwater for use ‎at an office building in Sana’a.

The RAINS system is relatively simple: Ensure that the rainwater, which falls on the flat rooftops of ‎buildings in Sana’a flows into pipes that are attached to water storage tanks that exist at ground level (or in some cases underground), rather than just having ‎the water drain from rooftop drainage pipes onto the street below and evaporate. To make the water ‎potable it can be filtered. For other uses, including gardens, it can be pumped up to the rooftop storage tank or kept at a later date in ‎underground tanks (if these are available). At the current prices for a water truck (around YR 10,000 or ‎USD $40), each time the tanks are filled, that amount is saved.

This system is a prototype still being assessed before the next rainy season. We are pleased with its ‎success, but it is likely that we would have collected even more water. This system does require ‎oversight in times of heavy rains. One Sunday morning we noticed that our water storage tanks were ‎full and, in fact, overflowing which allowed a lot of water to escape unused to the pavement. We used ‎a hose to drain the water from the upper tanks to an underground storage tank that we had with this prototype. The underground storage tank is also directly connected by ‎a water pump to our rooftop tank, but the hose had a kink in it, causing water to back up and overflow ‎once the above-ground tanks were filled. Once the kink was sorted out, it took another twenty-four ‎hours to empty the 10,000 liters and fill up the underground water tank and the rains were still falling ‎in Sana’a.

Imagine if every building and every house in Sana’a were doing the same! ‎

So what’s next for the project? My team will continue to develop the prototype and we hope to have installed the first water storage tank at the beginning of next year. Watch this space!