• Cost: $90+tax (Pump $50, Heavy Duty Extension Cord $40)
• Yield: Years of Effortless Water Transfer
• Money Saved: Money is Time, right?

Caution: banking Dripcoin is addictive. Not like stealing, because no one owns the rain,  and not like gambling because there’s no risk. It is more like a drug addiction where the only relief is to find more.

Some rainy winter nights I would slip silently from our warm bed, don foul weather gear and a headlamp, and emerge into the beautiful wet world of the garden to transfer water. I still miss those days. Instead of lulling me to sleep, the sound of rain caused me to spring into happy action. Afterward in the wee hours of the morning I would lie awake aflush with the excitement of new ideas.

One night I fell asleep wondering “How can I transfer water faster and easier?” At the time I was syphoning the water using a spare hose. This is so easy and everyone should know how to use a syphon. It’s not super fast, and requires a little rigging to empty each barrel, but it’s fun and free if you own a hose! But when I awoke that morning I decided to buy my very own sump pump.

Fairfax Lumber & Hardware Company, one of my favorite hardware stores, sold me this beauty:

The Ace Oil-Free Submersible Multi-Purpose Pump cost me just under $50 plus tax.  “Oil-Free” means the motor is enclosed and won’t leak oil into whatever you’re pumping. This is necessary to harvesting clean, unpolluted water. It’s also light and easy to use. An ordinary hose screws right to the top. Drop it into a barrel of water and plug it in and the water shoots out the other end of the hose like a madman! When it’s done, you hear the sound of empty, gurgly sucking like the end of a milkshake. It doesn’t hurt the pump, but you should disconnect it so it doesn’t burn out. I caught it late a couple of times, having left the garden to heat up a leftover burrito, now that I had, um, extra time.

Having your very own sump pump makes you a more powerful person. It’s like having jumper cables for your car, or a truck with a winch. Sometimes people “need a guy” with a pump. You can be that guy. It feels good.

I also bought a 50′ heavy duty extension cord for about $40. This was necessary to make the pump work wherever the water was, which was far from an outlet. To move water more than 50′, I had to pump twice; once to a halfway spot, and then again to the final storage spot. Fun.

San Francisco residents understand drought conditions. Periodically there are seasons without much rain or snow, and water is all people talk about. Weather reports, global warming, and whether or not to flush toilets is all people talk about.  Locals follow this rule: “When it’s brown, flush it down, when it’s yellow, let it mellow.” The biggest fights are more political and serious.. how much water should be used to grow how much food, and how much water should be apportioned for drinking. No matter where you stand on the issues, you become nervously aware of our human need for water.

Then you step outside to get the paper. What about watering your garden? And what’s growing there anyway? Are you raising livestock and food for your household? (unlikely) Or have you created a pretty environment with a dazzling array of plants which now appear to need water rather badly, maybe even before you go inside? And is that wrong?

One day it hit me. On the head. A rain drop. Free water! Hey! Why not collect a little for next week? At least the annuals that I planted will live a little longer! So I put a pail out, a trash can, and its lid, turned up to the sky. That was all I did, and went inside to do other things out of the rain. This small act changed EVERYTHING. 

Following the rain, each vessel was full of clean, clear water. My first Dripcoin! Mine to spend! I carefully banked my first deposit in the trash can and covered it with the lid, then checked the weather. More rain coming. I went back outside and put out more containers. That night I could hardly sleep. Free water!!