All of the neighbor’s yards are yellow, some almost brown, but not his. His is a lush, deep green, with a maze of radiant flower beds lining grass pathways leading to healthy vegetable gardens, berry patches, and apple trees. A green thumb? Perhaps, but clearly this spectacle requires volumes upon
volumes of water to sustain – far more than the average rainfall allows. “How does he do it?” the neighbors ponder. “His water meter reads less than ours!” Not that they would check it, of course.
He tells them of a rain dance he learned from The People of the Blue Rock, but the truth is he has a one-of-a-kind backyard geyser, originally created when his kids thought “wouldn’t it be nice if there were one in the yard” after visiting Yellowstone.
Since his house is by the shores of the Atlantic, he decided on tidal power for his geyser. Just offshore he has a dock, a heavily weighted dock, with enough floats on the underside to keep it buoyant, and then some. The dock is attached to a huge piston centered below, which is set in a cement base and anchored to the seafloor.
When the tide rises, the dock pulls the piston up. The piston draws water in through a wide screen to filter out fish and seaweed, then a smaller screen for shrimp, et cetera, then a series of progressively smaller tubular membranes. It fills with desalinated water through this one-way inlet to the height of the tide via ‘sucking’ reverse osmosis.
As the piston draws upwards, it is held to that height by a ratcheting mechanism. When the tide goes out, the dock and piston remain at the high water mark.
Attached to the dock, a mechanical timer begins a 6.5 hr. countdown as the water level drops below the supported dock. The timer has a cord with a weight and float at the end. When the weight hangs in air, the clock is ticking. The float allows a coil spring in the timer to reel the weight back in when submerged. At 6.5 hrs. it drops a heavy bead, which slides down a thin pole to hit the ratchet switch, releasing it. The piston compresses.
Now under high pressure from the weight of this configuration, the water is forced through a one-way outlet at high speed into a pipe, where it travels inland underground, curving up to a vertical position in the center of his backyard, flush with the surface. Here it blasts high and wide through an angled rotating grate before raining back down on his thirsty land.
His kids spray painted a few rocks yellow, and made a wooden ‘Old Faithful’ sign. They love it. His nosy neighbors may forever suck at rain dancing.