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A simple new iPhone/iPad app. called Drip Detective lets you quickly find out how much that dripping faucet is costing you. Drip Detective is only $1.99 at the iTunes store, and it could save you hundreds of dollars.

There are two easy ways to determine the rate of your leak with this app.

1. Simply tap the screen each time a drips falls from your faucet. After four our five taps, Drip Detective determines the average drip rate. You input the cost per gallon of water from your water bill, and it calculates how much money is going down your drain.
2. If you have a fast leak, you can measure by volume.

Drip Detective supports both Metric and American volumes, and totals your water and dollar waste by day, week, month and year.

In think Drip Detective is one of the easiest, most practical apps. available for understanding the impact of what may seem like an inconsequential waste of water. It’s a water conservation tool that will help you achieve savings that will really add up.

Rock yards and cactus are not the only solution to a water-wise landscape. Managing the amount of water used is also a factor. Most of Arizona receives very little rain each year; therefore people rely on municipal water for landscape plants and gardens. Selecting low water-use plants is important but managing what little rain falls can make a difference, too.

Rainwater harvesting is the process of catching and storing rain or creating a path for the water to find its way to trees, plants, or gardens. Watch how water flows on a property during a rain storm. Direct it in to storage barrels or cisterns with gutters and use it later. Slow the flow on hills or slopes by creating a slight ditch (or row) on contour to prevent soil erosion as well as allow the water time to settle into the soil.

When it rains automatic irrigation systems can be turned off, even if it is just for a day or two! Rain stored in barrels can be used as needed over a period of weeks or months depending on the quantity stored. Properly managed and stored rainwater in the desert can make a difference in an arid environment.

Check out the Landscape Water Guide and “Watering By the Numbers” to help you determine the irrigation needs of your landscape.

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

Our guest author this week is Doreen Pollack. She is a Master Gardener, a Permaculture Designer and the owner of Down 2 Earth Gardens. Doreen provides advice to homeowners on how to reduce the use and dependency of outside resources in their landscape. She specializes in working closely with do-it-yourself gardeners and people just starting to use their yard for food production and respite from their busy lives.

Water not only sustains life. It quenches a lifestyle thirst. And when its use is abused, it can vanish. And with it, the life around it evaporates.

This withering of water and life is captured in the stark yet beautiful photos of Gigi Cifali’s series, “Absence of Water.”

You can feel the former living, breathing character of these now derelict lidos and baths in the United Kingdom through the architecture, which feels as though it’s frozen in time. The decided absence of one element – water – is what has lead to their ruin.

Through her photo essay, Cifali hopes to “express the importance of water” as an “element of regeneration for the human spirit.”