April Showers

Spring has sprung and with April showers we will get May flowers! This is a simple way of boiling down to the subject of this blog post. Rainwater harvesting and its use within a dwelling. After thousands of years of dwelling evolution, weather observations, and hundreds of years of Architectural building science – humans are well poised to take the next step into not only sustainable, but regenerative habitation on this planet.

Architects such as Buckminster Fuller with his geodesic domes, Frank Lloyd Wright with his Naturalistic Architecture, all the way to modern designers like Michael Reynolds with his Earthships and Wolfgang Feist with his Passive House building science techniques have shown us the way. Today, we can take lessons learned from these great Masters of Architecture and implement them into housing that not only shelters but provides, and at the very essence of provision is water. The foundation of life itself.

Notwithstanding the convoluted regulatory situation around water laws in Colorado, it is a crying shame that up to just a few years ago, it was illegal to collect rainwater as it is claimed that even the rainwater was privately owned! Today, we are partially beyond this, and it is now legal to collect rainwater provided it is used for landscape irrigation. It is still a gray area to collect rainwater for indoor potable use. Thus, and unfortunately the realities of our government and legislature make it so we have to remain creative about how we navigate this issue.

Thanks to the Masters of Architecture that have come before us, we know how to collect rainwater via roof runoff and cistern collection systems, we know how to treat rainwater with whole house filtration and UV purification systems. We know how to plumb water around the different use cases such as showers vs toilets vs drinking water. We know how to collect gray water and treat it through constructed wetlands that can be integrated into the Architecture and not only become a moment but also a living system that provides food and nourishment. We know how to design and construct shelter for plants and animals to survive and thrive in even the harshest climate conditions, we typically call them greenhouses. And lastly, we know how to design and construct radically efficient buildings that not only do not lose energy but can harvest, redistribute and reuse it. We have every tool in the shed at our disposal to create beautiful living, breathing, nourishing and thriving habitation.

At BONSAI Design + Build, we are constantly researching cutting edge building science techniques and exploring ways we can implement these methods into our modern homes. Check out our portfolio to explore past projects and how we’ve successfully implemented these into our Architecture. Do not hesitate to reach out if you are ready to take the next step into a regenerative lifestyle and construct a home that harmonizes with the planet. It all starts with a vision and a design. We offer a low commitment concept design and budgeting service where we can help bring the vision to paper so you can understand what it will take to make it happen. This is the first step to making a thriving future a reality, this also goes great on any vision board!