Conserving rainwater

It’s been a month now and I still can’t stop myself from rushing to the terrace in the morning, after a night of heavy rain.

After several months of seeking ways (unsuccessfully!) to harvest rainwater for our apartment, we had arrived at an elementary solution. Most local experts whose advice and opinion we sought were unable to help. Even the internet tips were of little use since they dealt with individual houses and/or entire apartment buildings.

Though our terrace is fairly large, we realised that the catchment area (the area which directly receives the rainfall and provides water to the harvesting system) is limited to the roof above the terrace room (approximately 120 sq ft). So after a lot of searching and researching, we decided to re-route the pipeline from this area to a rooftop storage tank.

Rainwater harvesting

Simple rainwater harvesting structure (pic: author)

Perhaps this is not the most scientific or efficient answer as rainwater should ideally be used to recharge the ground water, but we felt we needed to make a start, and a lot of time (and rain) had already been lost! And I must say it is most fulfilling to be able to use this water for watering plants, washing clothes, cleaning the toilets. It has also helped us on days of water shortage or reduced water supply. We are now more hopeful of finding an efficient and low-cost method to harvest rainwater for the entire apartment building too.

A recent article on Jeff D’Lemos and his keenness to help people conserve rainwater would be useful for others looking for solutions. Other useful links include rainwaterclub and aboutrainwaterharvesting.com.

We are relatively lucky to live in Bangalore that receives rainfall not just from the north-east and south-west monsoon, but also has its fair share of convectional rainfall. Can you imagine the amount of water we could save if each of us were to make a tiny start? It does not involve too much time or effort or money, just the inclination and concern.

Comments:

  1. Vishwanath Srikantaiah says:

    This Rain Barrel of yours would be ideal for drinking and cooking purpose. It should be high quality water Take a look at this
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV2l6GC9bVc

    to check the quality and treat your water. At best I would suggest that you tie a saree, folded 3 times, at the mouth of the pipe before it comes into the drum

  2. Vinita says:

    THANK YOU AGAIN MR VISHWANATH. will try this too.

  3. CS Sharada Prasad says:

    Aah there he is – the zenrainman. Glad to see you here Vishwanath

  4. India Water Portal says:

    Readers can check:
    http://www.indiawaterportal.org/rwhdir/

    where we have started a directory of rainwater harvesting implementations in Bangalore. If you harvest rainwater, can you write to us to add your structure to the directory.
    If you want to harvest rainwater, we could give you contacts of people who could help you to do this.

    There’s also a googlegroup ‘voicesfromthewater’ that is seeking to connect up citizens interested in domestic water management in Bangalore.

    We can be contacted at portal@arghyam.org

    And lastly if you are big into Kannada, try
    http://kannada.indiawaterportal.org

    Best wishes,
    Vijay Krishna
    India Water Portal

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