During the raining season, the water gushes down the pipes from the roof but if we can store it properly then we can use it for drinking purpose, for preparing food and other household chores. If we can carry out the process of retaining rainwater properly, we can collect a sizeable amount of water from the rainfall. But due to lack of knowledge, we tend to overlook the usage of this immense source of water. So, how can we collect rainwater and put it to the best use? Let’s have a look.
Benefits of rainwater harvesting
Rainwater can be used for so many purposes starting from irrigation to drinking. The quality of rain water is considered to be much better than the surface water; so many people use it as a source of drinking water after the initial filtering and treatment.
If you look at the advantages of rainwater harvesting, you will find a long list of it. Some of them are given below:
- It provides water to places that are facing drought
- It prevents low lying areas from getting flooded
- It enables dug wells
- It can be used as a water source for irrigation without having to add any chemical like fluoride or chlorine
- It makes available clean water without the presence of iron salt in it
The process of rainwater harvesting
The rainwater harvesting process involves a few steps that are explained below. If you follow them correctly then you will be able to store rainwater and use it to the optimum level.
1. Collection of rainwater: The area where the rainwater gets collected is known as catchment. For rainwater harvesting at independent homes, the catchment area is usually the roof and the water can be collected in the drums through proper channeling. Determining how much water you’ll need can be tricky. Many people have used devices like a flow meter to measure how much water they actually use in their household. This can give you a better idea of how much rainwater you’ll ideally want to collect.
2. Transportation of the water: The pipes that are used to transport the water from the roof to the drums can be made of iron sheets folded into a cylindrical shape, PVC pipes or even bamboo which needs to be cut vertically. Now from the catchment area to the filtering area, the water needs to be transported and for that you will need pipes which are called the conduits. These are mainly built of PVC or metal sheets and these conduits are fixed to the catchment area and the area where the filtering of water will take place.
3. Filtering the harvested water: This is an important part of rainwater harvesting as depending on this, the usage of water will be decided – whether it will be safe for drinking or not. So, collect fiber, sand, gravel, and charcoal since these materials make for a perfect purifier. They will remove dirt and impurities from the water after which it can be sent to the storage tank.
4. Storing the filtered water: Storing the rainwater is simple. After filtering the water you can store it in clean storage tank and depending upon the amount of water collected you can choose the size of your storage.
Instead of storing, you can also choose to send the water to the ground in order to raise the ground water level in your area. This can be done by digging a pit in the ground and allowing the collected water into it. The pit itself will serve as a filtering unit if you fill it with the filtering materials we discussed in step 3 above (fiber, sand, gravel, charcoal, etc.)
So, next time there is rain in your area, don’t forget to harvest the water!
