Davis Family Not Letting Recent Rainfall Go To Waste

DAVIS (CBS13) - A Davis man decided it was his turn to do his part in conserving water, so he built a 1,100-gallon rain recycling system.

Most folks in Davis can't hose down their driveway or wash their car whenever they like, but that's not the case for the Montijos, that's because they have recycled rainwater they can use.

"This is the first part of it. It starts here from the gutters and goes down here," said David Montijo.

He doesn't consider himself an environmentalist, just an idea guy.

I know we need the water -- need to save -- and this is one of the ways to do it," he said.

Montijo used to watch the rain rush down from his roof gutters to the ground and thought, there had to be a way to reuse the water.

"I just always knew in the back of my mind that this was a valuable resource that's coming off our roofs," he said.

After years of sitting on the idea, he decided to finally to build it. He calls it "The Rain Recycler."

"You could almost do anything with this water," he said.

It's similar to other rain barrels. He put a piping system around his house, which moves the rainwater into this tank.

"That's water that we're sending down the streams that we could hold for a little while and use in the summer," he said.

But he also connected a pump to the tank through a one-way valve. That allows this hose to directly take water from inside the tank.

"That's quite a bit of pressure right there," he said.

With city drought mandates still in place, this is one way Montijo can use water whenever he likes. But in the long run, it'll save him money on his water bill, he says.

"If you did that on every roof it would be a tremendous amount of water," he said.

Montijo is planning on upgrading to a 2,500-gallon tank as soon as he can afford it. He is also starting a company called Rain Recyclers.

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