wellcomb is a dual-purpose metal comb: a hair grooming tool that also acts as a fog-harvesting device. It’s the first part of a bigger vision - to turn everyday objects into tools for climate resilience and clean water access.
Around the world, millions of people face growing water scarcity, especially in remote or drought-prone regions with limited infrastructure. wellcomb helps address this by collecting water directly from the air using fog - a natural, renewable resource - through simple, durable, and replicable technology.
wellcomb is simple. The grooming combs are laser-cut from steel, with teeth spaced and shaped to maximise the surface area while letting wind and fog pass through. Mounted on a frame, they create a vertical plane where water condenses and drips into a collection system below. This principle is inspired by trees which have evolved leaves shaped to collect and funnel water to their roots.
The combs are designed to screw directly into (potentially) recycled steel beams, forming part of a modular frame, almost like the trunk of a tree, providing a robust structure to resist high winds. These parts are small enough to be carried to remote, high elevation sites and assembled on location, even in places where access is limited to footpaths. The combs are the building blocks. A fog-harvesting structure might use hundreds of them.
Every comb sold helps fund the construction of fog-harvesting frames in areas facing water scarcity. The long-term vision is that each comb bought for personal use is paired with a matching comb installed in a real-world structure - turning everyday purchases into part of a shared, global system for clean water access. While this one-to-one pairing may not be possible during early prototypes, each sale still directly supports testing, development, and deployment.
This project has grown out of many overlapping threads in my life: volunteering, engineering, travel, and a deep concern about water access and climate breakdown.
Several years ago, I volunteered with a small water and sanitation charity working in Cameroon. I saw first hand how life-changing clean water can be. But I also noticed how hard it was to connect donors and supporters to the story. The work was meaningful but distant. I began to wonder: what if we could bring people into a water project more directly, perhaps through a contribution as a physical product?
That idea remained dormant until, while bike packing through water scarce regions of Morocco and Spain, I became fascinated by fog. In remote mountain regions where rainfall is limited, fog often appears daily. Trees and plants have evolved to harvest it. So could we. I later learnt about projects in Morocco, Chile and the Canary Islands that were harvesting fog for drinking water.
As a structural engineer, I started sketching. I thought about how we might collect fog water more efficiently, using parts that could be mass-produced and recycled materials. Something durable, modular, and easy to replicate.
That idea became wellcomb. A comb designed for grooming, but also for catching water from fog.
