WATER
THE DESERT'S MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE
WATER PHILOSOPHY
HAPPY CASTLE ART CAMP
Water is sacred—a life-giving force that sustains all living things. Yet, in much of the modern world, its value is taken for granted. With a twist of the tap, water flows, but behind this convenience lies an invisible network of often destructive infrastructure. As humankind prioritizes unchecked growth and convenience over sustainability, we deplete aquifers, dry up rivers, and ravage fragile ecosystems. The consequences are monumental: freshwater scarcity is projected to become one of the defining humanitarian crises of the century, fueling droughts, famine, and untold suffering.
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Happy Castle is not just a community—it’s a revolutionary response to this crisis. We reject the model of domination over nature in favor of coexistence and stewardship. We recognize water as a precious, finite resource and commit ourselves to achieving self-sufficiency in one of the harshest climates imaginable. By harvesting the scant rainfall of the high desert, building innovative water systems, and regenerating the land, we aim to prove that humanity can thrive without exploiting the Earth.
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Our vision is grounded in action. Through earthworks designed to capture and store rainwater, we will heal the land and enhance the natural flow of water. Greywater recycling, hydroponic farming, composting toilets, and permaculture practices will allow us to reduce water usage to unprecedented levels—setting a national benchmark for conservation. Phase by phase, we will expand from modest infrastructure supporting 25 Villagers to a robust system sustaining over 100 residents and regenerative farming operations. Acres of rain-harvesting surfaces and modular Earthbag cisterns will ensure ample storage for our needs, even in times of scarcity.
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This is more than survival; it’s a blueprint for a better future. Happy Castle’s water systems are a radical declaration that we can live sustainably, even in arid environments. By marrying ecological principles with human ingenuity, we aim to inspire a global movement that challenges the old ways of waste and destruction. At Happy Castle, water is not only life—it’s revolution.
THOMAS LOVEHEART
RAINWATER HARVESTING
AND STORAGE
Rainwater harvesting, like all aspects of the early buildout, will proceed in phases. Although it is our long-term goal to support more than 100 Villagers and self-sufficient farming operations solely off of the rainfall we collect onsite, our initial rainwater-collecting infrastructure will be modest and likely be highly subsidized by well-water or that transported from offsite. For a population of 100 villagers we’d need literal acres of rainwater collection surface area and millions of gallons of storage capacity.
For Phase One our goal is water self-sufficiency for just 25 people. However, even this will still be a gargantuan task. According to the New Mexico Water Authority, the average Alburquerque resident uses 52 gallons of water per day, a number far below the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimated national average of 82 gallons per day. Much of this is wastefully spent watering lawns, flushing toilets, and washing vehicles, but let's assume our Villagers had about the same daily consumption. Fortunately, our culture of water conservation, including grey-water recycling, hydroponic-farming, composting toilets, and permaculture design principles that maximize water-utility, would significantly lower our expected gallons-per-person to even less than Albuquerque's already impressive average.
Still, we do intend to overbuild our systems to ensure against shortages as well as begin to prepare for the fact that, as a year-round public campground and events venue, we will likely need more water than strictly calculated. Furthermore, our long-term plans see us someday using our advanced water-resources as an additional income-source for the commune, providing showers, laundry, and drinking water to our guests for a reasonable fee. For now, we’ve set a goal of 50 gallons per villager per day as our Phase One benchmark.
RAINWATER COLLECTION
The two major challenges facing our rainwater self-sufficiency goals are collection surface-area and storage capacity. Since the majority of our rain falls during the Monsoon Season between mid-June and late-September, we’d need to significantly overbuild our rainwater collection and storage capacity in order to essentially collect and store all the water we’ll need for the rest of the year within this narrow rainy window.
In an area that only sees an average of just 7.8 inches of rainfall per year, building the required surface area needed for that much rainwater-collection, not to mention the volume required to store that much water, even across 160 acres is a remarkably ambitious proposition. In order to meet our 25-person Phase One goals, we’d need 456,250 gallons of water. A basic, easy to understand, equation for rainwater-collection is: 1-inch of rainfall on a 1,000sqft surface yields 623 gallons. So, the 7.8 inches of annual rainfall we receive in Socorro would yield 4,859.4 gallons a year on a 1,000sqft surface. So to collect 456,250 gallons we’d need approximately 93,900sqft of surface-area in order to catch enough rain to meet our goals. That’s over 2.15 acres.
Although we hope to eventually build hundreds of shade structures across the campground to simultaneously provide our commune with all the shade, solar-power, and rainwater harvesting area it needs, this just isn’t feasible in Phase One.
Instead, the plan is to build one-half of the projected infrastructure and rely on our well-water and offsite subsidies to account for the shortfall. That’s still more than an acre of surface area or about 47,000sqft. Our 60x80ft prefabricated warehouse, greenhouse, finished bathroom segment, and 150kW solar-system will provide 20,300sqft of total collection area. The other 26,700sqft could easily be achieved through the use of large-scale shade structures scattered across the campground, including non-permeable tarps if necessary. This shade-building project is quite scalable and only serves to enhance the campground and-festival experience with every pergola we erect.
EARTHBAG CISTERNS
So, now that we have our surface area calculations worked out, let’s get to the fun part. How are we going to store all that water? 456,250 gallons is a lot. In fact, it’s like 30 swimming pools worth. Even building half of the required storage capacity is still a major undertaking, especially on our budget. But we’ve figured out a way.
With our excavator, we plan to dig a series of deep pits across the property. Inside these pits we’d build below-ground Earthbag silos, each capped in a dome. On average, these silos would be about 15ft in diameter. Once plastered and buried these cisterns could hold between 15,000-25,000 gallons of water. They could be built virtually anywhere and interconnected, modularly expanding our storage capacity as needed. Like our dome-homes, construction of these Earthbag cisterns would be extremely affordable, using mostly local soil in their construction. However, both the interior and exterior would need to be coated in a waterproof concrete plaster, increasing costs.
If we intend to build half of our required water infrastructure in Phase One, we’d only need to build about 15-20 of these cisterns. However, we may build even more if resources allow. By taking this phased and innovative approach, we’ll create a foundation for rainwater self-sufficiency while preparing for the ambitious growth of our commune.
WELL WATER
We are only 6-7 miles from the Rio Grande and experience
750ft in elevation difference. This give us a pretty decent idea of how deep any wells drilled onsite would have to be. With an average cost of $10-25 per foot in the area, an 800ft well would cost $8,000-$20,000. Assuming we go deeper, like 1000ft, we're looking at $10,000-$25,000 for a single well. Neighbors in the area do have wells, but there is no guarantee that we would actually find water, meaning drilling a well could turn out to be an enormous and fruitless expense.
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Additionally, the Happy Castle Commune intends to serve as a model for the world, demonstrating the practicality and possibility of living fully off-grid and self-sufficiently in an arid, high-desert environment. Relying on well-water is antithetical to this stated mission.
However, self-sufficiency is an aspirational goal that we will consistently progress towards, not a condition that will be met immediately. That said, considering the sheer amount of surface area adequate rainwater-collection would require and the astronomical costs associated with constructing such infrastructure, drilling a well might be the more reasonable option in the first phase of the buildout process.
OFFSITE SUBSIDIES
In the early stages of development, before a well is drilled, most of our water will be transported to Happy Castle from offsite. Water trucks will deliver to several 1,000-gallon tanks on the property. With the town of Socorro only 20 minutes away, delivery costs for 10,000 gallons are estimated at $500–600.
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While this may seem manageable, the numbers quickly add up. Drilling a well, with an upfront cost of around $30,000, would eliminate the recurring expenses associated with water deliveries. For a community of 25 people, each using 50 gallons daily, we’d require more than 45 deliveries annually, costing nearly $25,000—just for one year. And this figure only accounts for individual usage. Early-stage development demands even more water, with significant quantities needed for construction activities such as creating the damp mix for Superadobe Earthbag Domes and pouring concrete.
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Even if our initial population is smaller than the planned 25-person Phase One capacity, the heavy reliance on transported water underscores the urgency of building sustainable water systems. Beyond being a financial drain, relying on imported water conflicts with our commitment to environmental stewardship and self-sufficiency. By proactively investing in sustainable water resources now, we not only align with our principles but also set the foundation for long-term resilience and success.
25 PEOPLE
Phase One
For our initial buildout phase, we are planning to strive towards self-sufficiency for a group of about twenty-five people. We expect our initial members would likely be very water-conscious desert-dwellers already, but we still intend to overbuild most systems. For us, that means 2.15 acres of rainwater catchment area and 456,250 gallons of storage volume. With excavators and heavy equipment we can eventually build this, but it will likely take quite a while depending on continued fundraising success. As with all things, the amount of income we have coming in will significantly influence our construction goals and timeline. For the most part, we’re operating within an anticipated budget of $385,000 from our Kickstarter plus a $100,000 pledge from our founder. That said, assuming we don't meet any of our stretch goals, we plan to build approximately one-half of our estimated water infrastructure requirements or about 228,000 gallons of storage capacity and 1 acre of catchment area.
A 100,000 gallon galvanized-steel water tank would run about $60,000 conservatively. Taking this route would use up too much of our runway too quickly. It would be more affordable to create numerous smaller-tanks using Superadobe Earthbag construction methods and our own streamlined installation process. We could install dozens a year at essentially the cost of concrete lining. The concrete still wouldn’t be cheap, but we estimate the system (twenty 15,000 gallon cisterns) could be built for less than $75,000. These systems would be paired with greywater planting basins that would significantly reduce the water needed for irrigation.​
We’d still need 47,000sqft of rainwater-collection surface-area, or about 1.075 acres worth of land. Most of this surface-area will come from a combination of solar-panels and shade structures. At this point, our group of 25 Villagers will only require about 150kW of solar-power which would only cover about one-third of an acre. Of course, we will eventually need to massively expand this system in the future as our population grows, but for now the bulk of the needed surface-area will come from our warehouses, shaded campsites, pergolas, gazebos, and other areas throughout camp. We’re planning to build a significant portion of these shade-structures so that they can be retroactively converted into additional solar-panel-capacity in the future as we seek to establish solar-overproduction as an income-source. For Phase One, we estimate this interconnected rainwater catchment area to cost just $45,000.
Phase Two: 50 People
Phase Three: 75 People
Phase Three: 100 People
Phase Four: 150 People
Phase One:
For our initial buildout phase, we are planning to strive towards self-sufficiency for a group of about twenty-five people. We expect our initial members would likely be very water-conscious desert-dwellers already, but we still intend to overbuild most systems. Based on EPA estimates of personal water-use, we expect we’ll need 80 gallons of water per person per day. For twenty-five villagers, this is 2000 gallons of water per day, or 730,000 gallons per-year. That’s 97,586.805556ft³ cubic-feet of water-storage volume. For simplicity, let’s establish a goal of 100,000ft³ of water storage onsite. For reference, the average swimming pool holds 18,000-20,000 gallons or 2,406.25 ft³-2,673.611111 ft³. That’s like 40 swimming pools. With excavators and heavy equipment we can eventually build this (plus maybe one actual swimming pool as a reward), but it will likely take quite a while depending on continued fundraising success. As with all things, the amount of income we have coming in will significantly influence our construction goals and timeline. For the most part, we’re operating within an anticipated budget of $385,000 from our Kickstarter plus a $100,000 pledge from our founder.
A 100,000 gallon galvanized-steel water tank would run about $60,000 conservatively. It would be more affordable to create numerous smaller-tanks using our own reusable concrete forms and streamlined installation process. We could install dozens a year at essentially the cost of concrete. However, we don’t necessarily need water-tanks, we just need a structure capable of holding 100,000ft³ of water. Technically 3600ft of 6ft-diameter concrete-pipe would hold that much water. Reinforced-concrete-pipes are typically available in this size and some manufacturers even offer special designs including arched and elliptical piping. However the cost can range from $125-300 per foot. To manufacture 3600ft of piping could easily cost $750,000. Someday this may be feasible for us, but in our buildout phase it definitely is not. However, by fabricating our own forms and pouring-onsite we could lower the costs by an order of magnitude. The concrete still wouldn’t be cheap, but we estimate the system could be built for less than $75,000. These systems would be paired with greywater planting basins that would significantly reduce the water needed for irrigation.
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We’d still need 117,175sqft of rainwater-collection surface-area, or about 2.7 acres worth of land. Most of this surface-area will come from a combination of solar-panels and shade structures. At this point, our group of 25 Villagers will only require about 150kW of solar-power which would only cover about one-third of an acre. Of course, we will eventually need to massively expand this system in the future as our population grows, but for now the bulk of the needed surface-area will come from shaded campsites and other areas throughout camp. We’re planning to build many of these shade-structures so that they can be retroactively converted into additional solar-panel-capacity in the future as we seek to establish solar-overproduction as an income-source.
25 PEOPLE
