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Milo man taps into a natural resource Musician designs affordable rooftop rain catcher By ERIC FETTERS The Associated Press MILO -- Rain, rain everywhere and not a drop to drink? Not if you're Rick Foster. The 54-year-old classical guitarist invented and is selling portable rainwater collectors that take advantage of Oregon's plentiful resource. "What I'm doing is really as old as the hills," said Foster, who lives with his wife and two daughters on a rural homestead more than 20 miles east of Canyonville. But Foster added a new twist to the old art of collecting the rain by designing a portable, relatively lightweight rain collector that uses plexiglass and vinyl sheeting. He's selling his invention under the name Rick's RainCatchers via a Web site and through ads. His design was born from desperation. The Fosters' well water is drinkable, but it was not particularly palatable, he said. "Our water is hard, real hard. So much so we didn't like to drink it," Foster said. He bought a water distiller to solve the problem, but that took six hours just to distill one gallon. So he looked into tapping into the 35 inches of rain that normally fall in south Douglas County each year. It seemed natural to Foster, whose family also uses solar cookers and a homemade solar water heating system at their home. But he found the ready-made devices for sale were hundreds of dollars. And most books he read suggested installing a tin roof or other roofing system and collecting water that way. He first cleaned a section of his roof's gutter and put up a makeshift plastic catch system. That blew loose in the first big wind. After scrubbing the roof and trying again to collect water off it, he found the water had a brownish tint. It turned out to be tannins from the shingles and tar paper. So he gave more thought to it and, about a year ago, he designed his first rain collector -- a 4-by-8-foot plexiglass surface angled to run the water into a collection hole and into large barrels. It worked, but the large rain catcher was the size of a small back porch roof and could collect thousands of gallons -- not practical for most people. After several improvements to his design, he made a new rain catcher from a wood frame and smaller plexiglass that was more portable and easy to clean. And his latest design, which he built in recent weeks, uses light clear vinyl sheeting for its collection surface.That makes it less expensive and even lighter to move. It can produce about 300 gallons of water from 30 inches of rain annually. Counting the new design, Foster offers three models of RainCatchers. He hopes to sell the new, vinyl sheeting variety for less than $140. One with a 16-square-foot plexiglass surface sells for $158 and his largest model, which has more than 24 square feet of plexiglass, sells for about $50 more. Since his wife, Wendy, set up the Web site last fall, Foster has sold two of his RainCatchers. One of the newest models with vinyl sheeting went to Elona Wong, who lives in Days Creek. The only source of water on her property is a creek of unreliable quality. She had been buying bottled water before she saw Foster's RainCatcher. "It just sounded like a good idea to me," Wong said. "It makes sense to get it from the sky rather than from the well or the spring." From a recent evening's rain, her RainCatcher collected a few gallons of clear water, she said. Ever since he built his first RainCatcher last year, Foster said his family has been drinking rainwater exclusively, except when their supplies ran out last summer. This year, with several rain collectors in their yard, the Fosters plan to store up enough extra so they don't have to resort to drinking their hard well water again when summer comes. But is drinking rainwater safe? Foster said he has been surprised at the skepticism he's received over that issue. After hitting his RainCatchers, the collected rainwater usually goes through a cloth filter before going into the collection jug. He also runs all the rainwater through a household Brita water filter pitcher before drinking it. The result tastes good and safe, he said, and the tests he's had done to the water seem to confirm that. Gerald Meyer, who deals with water quality issues for the Douglas County Health Department in Roseburg, said it's "probably pretty safe" to use rainwater. "I have no idea what the interest is ... but I think it could be real useful to thousands of people," especially those who live in places with bad-tasting well water, Foster said. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA