Rain Water Harvesting

The simplest solution for the ever growing water scarcity.

Humans have always wanted water for almost all of their activities. They have found ways to get water to their house, right from pumping up water from a bore well to building dams and channeling water. Ages ago people used cattle to draw water from wells and rivers, it is said that the Egyptians built many canals and drew water from the Nile. Then people started the use of hand pumps, and now the motor pumps to pump up ground water. No one used the water that gets delivered to their house: THE RAIN. Except for the few farmers who planned their sowing period.

What is Ground water?

There are huge reservoirs just under (50-400 feet) the earth’s surface that has large amount of fresh water flowing. These reservoirs get their water from the rain. Rain water seeps through a layer of topsoil, then through a layer of rocks, which acts like a filter and purifies the water. This water dissolves some of the minerals as well. Humans access this water by means of wells and bore-wells.

Facts:

One: Only 5 % of the water on earth is fresh water and consumable by humans.
Two: 60% of this fresh water is in the form of glaciers in the mountain caps, Artic and Antarctic.
Three: A very high percentage of the remaining fresh water is contaminated and polluted.

Rain:

It is a natural distillation process. Sunlight evaporates only the water and leaves the impurities. Low temperature at the higher altitude cools the water vapor and precipitates the water down.

What is Rain water harvesting?

It’s very simple: Collecting rain water.

How to collect?

Create channels on your house, office and other buildings to collect all the water that falls on the building. You can even use the existing drain lines that these buildings have to drain away the rain water. Now we can collect his water in an underground chamber, or can be used for recharging ground water.

Lakes, ponds and some perennial rivers are examples of nature's own way of collecting rain water. Ground water is the nothing but the rain water that nature has been harvesting for millions of years now.

The growing need for water has made humans exploit all their resources, especially the ground water. Here in India most of them rely on ground water. About half of the houses in the city have bore wells and most of the rural population depends on wells. Nearly half of these vents have dried out due to over use. Humans are using water from these sources much faster than the nature can replenish them. So the simplest solution is to harvest free fresh water.

Rain Water Harvesting and Global Warming

Now everyone knows about global warming and its effects. The increase in green house gasses increases global warming. Some of the green house gasses are carbon-di-oxide CO2, Methane CH4, Nitrous Oxide N2O and water vapor. There are so many methods we would have heard about in reducing CO2, CH4 and N2O, but no method of reducing the water vapor in the atmosphere. The solution to this is Rain water harvesting. Rain water gets stored in the chambers or goes underground instead of stagnating on the surface, which is later evaporated leading to increase in water vapor in the atmosphere. This is the most effective solution I could think off. When I learnt that water vapor is a green house gas. I used to wonder what we could do to reduce the evaporation of water from oceans, lakes, rives, ponds, etc. There is actually nothing we can do about it, but we can reduce the amount of surface water.

Advantages of Rain water Harvesting

Over a period of time, floods and drought can be controlled.
Proper utilization can result in huge water collection.
Places which are far from the water sources can be benefited.
Replenish the rapidly reducing ground water.
Reduces green house effect.
It’s inexpensive.
Very easy to implement RWH.
Least or no maintenance required.
Ratio of return to investment is very high. Invest once and enjoy for ever.