Rainwater down to the River and Back

Raincube.io
Sep 6, 2018 · 6 min read

“What does the school of the future look like?”

The Green School in Bali, Indonesia

During the months of July and August, I had the opportunity to visit the Green School in Bali, Indonesia to find out what the school of the future looks and feels like. I was there to help them think about their interaction with their local and our global watershed. I have been following Green School’s progress for a few years since watching the founder, John Hardy’s TED Talk. This past spring I saw another TED Talk by his daughter Elora Hardy and the beautiful bamboo structures she and her team are building in Bali. After watching Elora’s video I visited the Green School website and noticed that they were undergoing a project called “Operation Rain or Shine” with the goal of integrating rainwater catchment into all existing and new buildings.

I reached out to the Green School via email, and in a matter of days, I was on the phone with their team asking how Raincube can help? Four months later I was riding a scooter through the rice fields of Ubud and to the gates of the Green School Campus. There, I was warmly welcomed by a few of their staff including their Energy Project Manager Dita, an Indonesian engineer from Java. Dita gave me the rundown as we walked through The Green School’s impressive complex of bamboo school houses surrounded by lush gardens of leafy greens, bananas, coconuts and moringa trees. In addition to a rainwater system, there is an aquaponics system, irrigated rice fields, and a vortex hydro turbine that is offline at the moment.

Entrance for guests and visitors.

The goal of a permaculture designer is to learn from the enabling constraints to create appropriate interactions of regeneration, healing, and vitality. If I am installing the same cookie cutter designs over and over again in Florida, of course, I will be bored and lose the vitality and inspiration and it will show in the product. However, the more I do this, the more second nature working with nature becomes. Global collaboration using local adaptations.

The local Balinese people have been practicing the art of Subak for centuries. The Subak organizes terraces and the communities that farm them around topography and where the water flows. The Subak is a trinity of rice production, water management, and religion with the priests overseeing worship at the spring heads. The villagers then vote who grows, when, and with how much water. The villagers at the lowest point of the watershed manage the yearly meetings.

A rice terrace under Subak management in Cangu, Bali with view of Mt. Agung in the top left.

While managing the flow of groundwater is a time-honored tradition in Bali, harvesting rainwater in tanks is still relatively new. The Green School was gifted eighteen, eleven hundred liter tanks that will act as water batteries capturing rain off the roof of their newly built energy hub building. The roof is also home to a solar panel array. After estimating the amount of harvesting potential taking into account the annual rainfall and roof size, it would take 7.7 inches of rain to fill all 18 tanks. That is enough storage capacity for a monsoon. If the Green School attaches the roof of the gymnasium, then the amount of rain needed to fill the tanks would drop significantly.

Once the rain is captured in the tanks, the water will flow from through a tiny turbine downhill that will provide passive hydro electricity meaning the marginal cost of producing that electricity was essentially free.

As the water leaves the turbine it will irrigate a garden downslope. Once the rainwater has been drained and the tanks are empty, a solar pump will draw water from the river and push it uphill to fill the tanks


Two tiered tanks.

After the design meeting, we put together a simple system diagram to help conceptualize the problem and possible solutions. This type of reticulated river loop design could also be evolved for interact with rainwater retention ponds which means that a farmer in Kentucky could use this just as well.

Rain and River Reticulation Diagram

With so much water and energy moving through this contraption, relevant, real time data would be helpful in managing the system more efficiently and effectively. The goal of this system to should be to balance the flow of water moving in, through, and out. Below is a list of questions that will help us to maintain a balanced water budget.


How much water is in the tank?

How much water has left the tank?

When will it rain again?

When will we need to refill the tanks from the river and by how much?

When will we need to drain the tanks in the future?

How much energy have we generated from the turbine?

How much energy/water has been consumed and by who ?

How much water have we taken from the river?

When does the garden need watering and by how much?

When do humans need watering and by how much?


A month after the design meeting finished, I was invited back to talk with two classes who are responsible for implementing the Pico-Hydro project.

The students range in ages from 11 to 17. I connected with the kids by talking about video games. Fortnight specifically, and more generally how harvesting rainwater could turned into a game by earning and unlocking raincoins. They intuitively understood the premise and started to run with the idea. Talking about pipe threading types would have probably put them to sleep.

I shared with the older students the hidden economics of bottled water and a sobering statistic that the poorer you are the more you spend on water as a proportion of your income. My takeaway from the discussions is that the students are very solution oriented and don’t get sidelined with doubt by uncertainty and dogma.

Over the next 6 weeks, the students will work through the questions by bringing this project to life. It will be interesting to see what novel answers nature will reveal to the students and what project they will choose to work on next. The IoT aspect to this project may be developed after the base infrastructure is installed. Already the students are taking classes about programming, and blockchain.

Bamboo library and laboratory. White boards help with stand-up education.

Bali will need critical minds like these young kids working on the complex problem of community water management since Bali is projected to start facing water shortages by 2020. Residential and Commercial water delivery by tanker truck is becoming more and more common especially in the southern part of the island.

The impact of the tourism industry, and the rise in income and consumption by the local population as a result of the tourism economy are both factors. I could write a book about this summer called “Eat, Pray, Rain” but I won’t.

I am very grateful to the Green School, to students, and to the faculty for such a wonderful and productive exchange. I am more convinced of the importance for innovation and diversity in how we regenerate ourselves and our environments and how the solution depends on education and community. With Raincube, the goal is to empower everyone to harvest and flow rain from the ground up, to the sky down. I look forward to seeing more growth and abundance at the Green School as the seed is planted today and cultivated by the next seven generations and beyond.


Hi! I’m Anthony Paglino, founder of Raincube and thanks for reading. Sampai Jumpa Lagi :)

To learn more about the future of rainwater harvesting go to Raincube.io and download the Blue Paper for free as a gift from me to you.

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