Here’s a new video showing our project work in Tojquia, Guatemala.
New video update from Guatemala
new tojquia project completed
The project mentioned in our last newsletter – the construction of a double panel large fog collector and the renovation of an adjacent greenhouse in Tojquia, Guatemala, has now been completed. FogQuest volunteers Pablo Osses and Tony Makepeace helped guide the volunteer effort of the townspeople who constructed the project in late January.
FogQuest has been working with the people in the village of Tojquia, in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, since 2006. It is an ongoing project to utilize large fog collectors to provide water for the needs of the people on their farms during the dry winter season. Together we have constructed 40 large fog collectors along with the installation of plastic water tanks to store the water. This has been a very successful project and a demonstration of the long-term viability of fog collection projects when they are conducted with the cooperation of the villagers. These fog collectors provide about 8000 L per day of fog water to the families during the winter season when rain is largely absent.
The collectors and the greenhouse are located next to the local schoolhouse. The water supply from the new fog collectors will be used to irrigate a vegetable garden in the renovated greenhouse as well as supply the water needs of the school. The schoolteacher and students assisted in the completion of the project.
We thank the Cloud Appreciation Society for their support of this project, as well as Rotary International. The Guatemalan firm TOCOSA provided valuable assistance with supplies and logistics. We also thank our our donors and members for their continued support.
Project expansion complete in Tojquia
Here’s a gallery of the new and completed fog collectors recently installed as a project expansion in Tojquia, Guatemala. Thanks to Nicolas Zanetta for these images.
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala 
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala 
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala 
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala 
Water collection tank 
Water collection tank 
Water collection tank 
Water collection tank 
Water collection tank 
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala 
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala 
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala 
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala 
New collectors – Tojquia, Guatemala
Tojquia project expansion underway!
FogQuest volunteers Tony Makepeace and Nicolas Zanetta recently oversaw the construction of the first two of five large fog collectors in the rural settlement of Tojquia, Guatemala. The local people are participating in the construction.
The very capable local men will take over and complete all five collectors. When the construction is complete, each collector will provide between 200 and 400 litres of fresh water daily.
Thanks to all of our sponsors, and a special thanks to the Rotary Club of Guatemala City, as well as the Cloud Appreciation Society in the U.K.
Tojquia project expansion – Nico Zanetta meets with representative of the Rotary Club Guatemala
Between 27 and 30 August, Nicolás Zanetta Colombo, Village Project implementer of FogQuest, is visiting Guatemala with the aim of refining the details of a new process of installing fog collectors in the locality of Tojquia. On this occasion, and as in previous processes, we have met with Eng. Marco Antonio “Tocono” Ortiz, General Manager of the company Tocosa and representative of the Rotary Club Guatemala Las Americas, who, together with his team, has provided time and Support for the search of the materials required for the installation and other logistical aspects.
We hope to continue to count on the support of Marco Antonio, the Tocosa group and the Rotary Club Guatemala Las Americas so that the project in Tojquia continues to grow and can benefit more families. We are confident that together we can advance the great challenge of delivering fresh water to communities in need in this country.
New Source for Mesh and Standard Fog Collectors – April 2018
FogQuest receives a constant flow of requests for mesh and for complete fog collectors. We assist individuals and other groups that are starting evaluations of fog collection at sites by selling small to moderate amounts of mesh. We encourage everyone to build their own small Standard Fog Collectors as this is a good learning process for anyone truly interested in fog collection. There is information in our FogQuest manual on how to do this. Also, even shipping the small one square meter SFC is expensive and it is impossible to do so with the 40 square meter Large Fog Collectors.
One of our members, Prof. Daniel Fernandez, at California State University, Monterey Bay, has now started a new business to provide a source of the same Marienberg Raschel mesh that FogQuest uses in its fog collectors. His company Bayside Fog Collectors will also sell assembled SFCs. The primary market is people in California. This is an alternative source of mesh and assembled SFCs that some of you may wish to consider. The company website and a contact email address are given here.
8th International Conference on Fog, Fog Collection and Dew 14 through 19 July, 2019, in Taipei, Taiwan
A new notice has come out regarding the 8th conference in the series that began in Vancouver, Canada in 1998. Information will be added to our conference page as it becomes available. Information from the first announcement is given in the paragraph below. We encourage everyone to consider attending.
The conference is the premier international gathering of fog and dew researchers from around the world. The ongoing series provides a dynamic forum for the exchange of ideas and the latest research findings from scientists worldwide interested in the life cycle of fog and dew at the interface between surface, vegetation and the atmosphere, and in the collection of fog and dew for freshwater production. Its interdisciplinary character gives this conference series a unique character at the crossroads between fog and dew physics and chemistry and their interactions with and impacts on vegetation, materials, and human activities. The conference features in-situ and remote sensing observations of fog and dew properties, high-resolution and numerical weather prediction modeling, equipment design for fog and dew collection, studies of water collection and use from fog and dew in arid environments, and examination of ecosystem interactions and impacts. The conference’s one-week format, gathering about 200 people, allows for ample plenary oral sessions and several long poster sessions conducive to in-depth scientific exchange. An exciting social program that provides opportunities to foster new collaborations boosts this scientific networking forum.
Support from the Cloud Appreciation Society – April 2018
We are very pleased to have ongoing support from The Cloud Appreciation Society in Britain, which will be spread out over the 12 months of 2018. This large and active organization is donating a portion of their membership fees to support the work of FogQuest.
It is led by Gavin Pretor-Pinney and can be reached at the link below.
https://cloudappreciationsociety.org
FogQuest Field Project for 2018 – Tojquia, Guatemala
We keep in regular contact with the people in the village of Tojquia, in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, where we have worked since 2006. The 35 large fog collectors, each with an area of 40 square meters, have provided a valuable water resource in the dry season for the villagers. Last year we identified five homes for the next stage of the project and installed new water tanks at the homes.
This year we will build five new Large Fog Collectors for these homes. The work will take place in September with the construction guided by Nicolas Zanetta from Chile, with the actual work being done by the people of the village. Two other FogQuest volunteers from Canada will participate and help with a variety of additional tasks. We hope to have a daily blog from the site during the two-week period in the field. If you can help support this project, we would greatly appreciate your donations.
New Projects in Nepal
The Nepal Agricultural Cooperative Central Federation Ltd. (NACCFL) is currently working in collaboration with the Chainpur Small Farmers Agricultural Cooperative Ltd. (SFACL) to find new sources of drinking water supplies for residents of the Chainpur Village Municipality in Dhading District. The community has traditionally relied on small springs emerging at the foothill of the upland forested areas but these went dry, however, after the April of 2015 earthquake, probably due to the fault lines that were created and which tunneled the available water supplies directly into the ground. The community had then to resort to bottle water supplies until they built an emergency supply line diverting water from a larger spring situated more than two kilometres away. In May of 2017, the community switched back to provisioning themselves from the local springs as these had recently started flowing back again. The flows have although been very variable and of low quality ever since.
NACCFL and the Chainpur SFACL recently launched a fog water collection study pilot project to assess the possibility of using fog water collection to expand the supplies in this water scarce community. Two Standard Fog Collectors (SFCs) of 1 m2 were installed to measure the fog collection potential in two strategically selected sites over a one-year period. The aim of this future project would be to build three or four Large Fog Collectors (LFCs) for a total surface area of up to 200 m2. So far, results from the SFCs indicate that collection rates of 5 to 6 litres a day would be easily reached for the four continuous months of the fog season there. At these rates, we would expect to increase the water supplies for the community by 120,000 to 144,000 litres a year. This project would target 50 households, thus improving water security for approximately 200 people.
FogQuest provided some initial project guidance, advice related to the construction and installation of the SFCs, as well as the Raschel mesh that was used in the fog collectors. We will also help to evaluate the SFC data that are being collected by Laurent-Charles Tremblay Levesque of CECI. Below are photographs of the two SFC installations, the geographic location, and the shop where the SFCs were constructed.
