Rainwater Collection

Rainwater collection can be referred to as the accumulation, gathering, and storing of rain water. Conventionally, rainwater collection has been put in to practice in semi-arid and arid areas. It has made provisions for domestic purposes, drinking, livestock, small irrigation, and ways of replenishing levels of ground water.

Benefits in the urban areas

Rainwater collection can have several advantages in the urban areas. These benefits are inclusive of provision of supplemental water to be used for the city, for increasing levels of soil moisture for the urban greenery, for increasing Ground Water Table via artificial recharge, for mitigating urban flooding and improving groundwater quality, and many more. In the urban regions of developed countries, collected rainwater, at household level, can be made use of in flushing toilets, washing toilets, and many such chores. In the areas pertaining to hard water, it’s, in fact superior to the mains water. Bathing or showering can also be done through collected rainwater.

Note that treatment strictly needs to be carried out before being used for drinking. In New Zealand, Most of the houses, which are away from larger cities and towns rely on the routine basis on the rain water accumulated from the roofs as only water source for the whole lot of household activities. This practice is prevalent in almost every holiday home.

Systems

There’re several kinds of systems for collecting rainwater. The type made use of depends a great deal on purpose, i.e. industrial or domestic, and to certain extent, on human and physical considerations. Let these systems be studied in details.

Domestic rain water systems

At present, there’re two kinds of systems in use. They include commercial and DIY systems. These terms fall in the category of ‘water harvesters’. If basic system is to be used, it would not matter even if you do not have much knowledge regarding its operation. In both the cases, system comprises of storage tank for storing water as well as for piping. In addition to this, extra equipment for pressuring, like pressure-sensitive pumps, inline pump-controllers, or pressure vessels might also be needed. Eventually, you, at times, need to add distillation, UV-lights, or water purifying plants for purifying the harvested water. Such a system is called ‘Grey water’ treatment system.

Grey water systems are generally preferred over the regular water accumulators, as they permit the system of not only treating the rain water, but also water from the other sources. For instance- water closet. This feature might also be avoided through the use of UV-lamp. Composting of toilet can also be done. The gravity-fed system might already be sufficient for having pressured system of water collection. This would definitely be depending on the local circumstances. Here, no pressure vessels/pumps would be required for having the pressurized system. The general practice is such that the creation of gravity-controlled system goes to show that water harvester is placed at an elevation. DIY domestic systems are turning out to be more and more popular with increase of awareness in the minds of people regarding water conservation.

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