Group Housing complexes have many choices
in implementing water harvesting projects.
Water has turned out to be a precious commodity. Its shortage is felt
acutely nowadays in most of the places. Being a limited resource, individuals
should take the personal responsibility of conserving it to the maximum
possible extent and utilizing it to the judicious minimum extent. For housing
societies, several solutions to tackle water woes are offered.But it could be
truly practical only if everyone possesses a proper knowledge so as to
understand it well, and there is also an imperative need to maintain the system
well so as to reap its benefits. More than everything, all the residents of a
housing society should imbibe in themselves an acute sense of responsibility,
for then only the entire system could succeed well and serve to its fullest
capacity.
Most people are under the wrong notion that
rainwater harvesting demands leaving more space and they could not afford
it. But the experts feel that this
should not be a worrying problem, for rainwater harvesting is not a huge
engineering project requiring a lot of space. Some of the easy and practical
harvesting methods that any housing society can deploy effectively without much
trouble are mentioned below.
This method could be applied to properties
with large areas. Here, the run off water from the rooftops is diverted into
the bare soil or garden in the premises. A trench of one metre deep and half
metre wide is dug at the periphery of the plot. Two to five bores, each two
metres deep, are drilled and filled with broken bricks. The trench is covered with a grill. The entire run off water is trapped in the
trench. From here it percolates underground through the bore pits.
This was the first and earliest method of
rainwater harvesting to be followed. But soon it fell out of favour, because
many were not fully aware of the exact depth the trench to be dug. Not digging
to the correct depth and instead digging a shallow pit will not serve the
purpose.
In houses and complexes with large open
spaces, a wide pit is dug along the compound wall and filled with large pebbles
(Nowadays people use broken bricks which are far cheaper and just as effective
as the pebbles). The pit is then covered with perforated RCC slabs. The run off water from the roof and surface
is directed into it. The pebbles need to be cleaned once a year so as to
improve the percolating capacity.
Experts do not favour this system because
here too one cannot be sure about what should be the depth of the pit. Another
major drawback is that this kind of digging was found to damage the compound
wall.
Among all the methods of harvesting
rainwater, the method of Service-cum-Recharge Well is the most effective, and
economical one, which is best suited for households and housing societies. In this method a service Well or an existing
Well and also the ground water table is recharged by directing rooftop and
surface run off water into them. Here,
any open Well within the complex itself is utilized. The rooftop water is
clean, unlike the surface run off water, and hence can safely be let into the
Well. If the compound does not already have an open Well, then a service Well
should be constructed. The water that
gets accumulated in it can be used for immediate purposes. The surface run off water can be tapped near
the gate by providing a gutter with a perforated lid. This water can be piped
into a recharge Well.
The ground water can also be effectively
recharged through soak pits that have sandy layers and brick jelly. The
wastewater from household chores can be diverted into this.
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