Necessity mothered invention when it came to the creation of the Crystal Rain Gauge.
“We wanted to make a product that lasts. Having worked on the property for many years, you can tell the difference between quality and durability having gone through many tools and machines.” Crystal Rain Gauge was created to be sustainable and reliable. A rain gauge that’s really is built for Australia.
For as long as she can remember, Lucinda Batey relished the responsibility of measuring the rain on her family’s property in the Turon River Valley in the NSW central tablelands.
“Rain has such significance in the country,” she says. “Even though ours is a hobby farm, rain is still an important event for the land. It’s the measure of flood and drought, the health of livestock and plants and good times and bad. It always felt very grown up to be charged with the responsibility of measuring the rain.”
However, as the years progressed, Lucinda, who was a corporate events manager in her other life, and her father, who is an entrepreneur and lawyer in his, felt increasing frustration with the shortcomings of the existing gauges on the market.
“It was as though there was nothing designed specifically for the Australian market,” Lucinda explains. “Plastic gauges fade with the years, becoming more opaque and harder to read. But even when new, if the angle of the sun was wrong, reading the calibrations was challenging. Having to decant the overflow from the large container into the calibrated inner container was fiddly and required not only dexterity, but some way to record the number of decants.”
The duo set out to design a rain gauge that addressed all of these problems. After two years of research, they launched the Crystal Rain Gauge. Presented in an aesthetically pleasing housing, it can be read without getting out of the ute and it records up to 200mm (almost eight inches) of rain without being emptied. Most importantly, it’s made from thermally toughened glass with fadeless, contrasting, easy-to-read annealed ceramic calibrations and it’s presented in an easily installable polished marine-grade stainless steel container, which doesn’t rust and can take whatever challenges the climate presents.
“Because we’re totally committed to quality, we have a close relationship with our customers,” Lucinda adds. “That means we have modified it to address any concerns they’ve had and we believe we’re now selling the best rain gauge on the market. We’re also prepared to back our product, which is why Crystal Rain Gauges come with a lifetime guarantee.”
Crystal Rain Gauges sell for $120. For more information including special offers, visit crystalraingauge.com.au
