[Gansan]

Originally Posted by DriverLess

I've have not found good source regarding side effects of doing this. Some people claim that ground water table will get contaminated if we do this. I would love to know more regarding this.

This is how RWH was carried out in Chennai, as directed by the municipal authorities. We have two wells, each 8 feet dia and 50 feet deep, in our apartment complex which date back to days when the property had just independent houses, and still yield water for our daily needs. They have been partially covered on top and accommodated in to a couple of OTS areas of the apartment complex by the builder. The rain water from the terraces is directed into these wells. They are able to take in copious amounts of water. Many apartment complexes in the vicinity have retained such old wells and used them for RWH. Those who didn't have wells, made use of defunct borewells for the purpose. Those who had neither, had to embed specified number of pipes of a specied dia, to ~ 12 feet depth in the lawns/garden strips of their complex for RWH.

It has yielded good results. And whether it is an open well or borewell in disuse, the harvested water goes into them through a filtration pit or mechanism, of course. Rain water is the purest form of water, and once filtered there should be no issues.

[d.w.w.]

Originally Posted by DriverLess

[*] Tanker Unregulated / Unorganized. No one has any clue on the source of water.

Right next to the apartment where we stayed in Chennai was a very large empty plot. The land was in to legal ownership cases, so the only option the current owner had to leave that empty. One one side of this plot was a large well, open and with no safety wall and it was just fenced with some metal net to keep animals/humans from falling inside. Private tankers used to source water from here. The plot was home to about 12-13 street dogs, buffalos/cows come here to graze and dog owners bring their pets here (for you know what). When it rains, all this dog shit, cow dung and other waste gets washed in to the same well. If the rains are heavy, water fills the land and covers the well. As soon as water recedes just below ground level, the tanker fellows show up, fill up this dirty water and carry on with their business. Felt sorry for those people buying this water.

Originally Posted by Gaur

However one the biggest disappointments i had was from the attitude of the common folks (read well paid I.T folks) who felt water is just a phone call (water tanker) away.

+1

In 2019 summer, we had a water shortage in Chennai. Our borewell went dry and the other apartment owners were ready to buy water at whatever cost tankers were asking with zero commitment to save/reduce their water use. One lady in the apartment even washed her apartment entrance daily while the maintenance-in-charge was desperately trying to arrange some tankers to refill the sump. Everyone was scared of her tongue, so nobody bothered questioning her actions

[Abhisheknott]

Great topic for discussion and very relevant.
A lot of people including me have started with reusing RO reject water but it is not very prevalent. In Chennai, thanks to the previous government RWH was mandated which helps.

Originally Posted by DriverLess

Innovations

I would love inputs from everyone on what else we can do to become sustainable with respect to water.

The public and the government has to work together for preservation and here its imperative that new buildings have enough space for green cover which will absorb the water into the ground. With urbanization there is no exposed earth to absorb which affects the ground water levels and the storm water drain networks are not effective enough to supplant this.

On personal note I wish property buyers do emphasize on retaining green cover as much as possible.

[DriverLess]

This summer could bring tough times for Bangaloreans due to failure of 2023 monsoon. There are some stats in the article below. I don't know if either Cauvery or tankers can quench our thirst this summer.

--
https://www.newindianexpress.com/cit...-for-bengaluru
Bengaluru is one of the most vulnerable cities in terms of water requirement, availability and dependence. The recent drought has raised concerns over the water situation in the state capital, with the environment department declaring there is no plan B

[gopa99]

Originally Posted by DriverLess

Kudos to you. Believe me it is really a difficult task for a large society to adopt this. Could you tell me if you have faced any meter maintenance issues due to the use of hard water?

The company had mentioned during our initial discussions that they have contactless meters and it wont have an issue with Hard Water. We use borewell water, and its just about medium hard as seen in south of Bangalore. There is a mesh filter that is added before each meter and that is cleaned if the flow is less. I also know they keep changing the meters when they feel it is not giving regular data back to their servers. This process is seamless and users rarely know about it; the only way this is reflected on our app is when the meter serial number changes. The operating contract and the cost is borne by the RWA, the agreement ensures that no additional costs are to be borne by users if a meter has been replaced. They have a very responsive help desk that helps individual users with any complaints about billing or handle requests for calibration. I have tried calibrating these meters using the 10 liter bucket method when ever I have a doubt, and they have always been very reliable and accurate. The proof is actually in the virtually trouble free operation in the last many years while keeping their user base happy.

[DriverLess]

Originally Posted by gopa99

The company had mentioned during our initial discussions that they have contactless meters and it wont have an issue with Hard Water. We use borewell water, and its just about medium hard as seen in south of Bangalore.

Thanks. Could you please share details of the company your apartment is using? A society is interested after reading your response about working without issues with hard water.

[gopa99]

Originally Posted by DriverLess

Thanks. Could you please share details of the company your apartment is using? A society is interested after reading your response about working without issues with hard water.

Sure. Sent in as a DM.

[Sandegov]

You can find some good information on Hinren Engineering youtube channel as well - rain water harvesting, composting, solar etc etc.

I have used his services for my roof top solar and he is a very knowledgable and easy to work with person.


https://youtube.com/@HinrenEngineering?feature=shared

[aashishnb]

One more suggestion, all of us can use a glass while rinsing after brushing teeth instead of using running water! Saves small quantum maybe, but worthwhile.

Similarly while shaving!

Originally Posted by vigsom

5. I don't have stats around this but with some self control, a shower saves a lot of water over the conventional mug and bucket.

Maybe you meant the other way. A bucket bath takes about 40-50 litres, but a shower takes about 100+ litres of water.

[DriverLess]

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/...197-2024-02-23

As predicted, severe water shortage has already started in Bangalore/surrounding areas and we are at least 4 months away from monsoon showers.

[vigsom]

Originally Posted by aashishnb

Maybe you meant the other way. A bucket bath takes about 40-50 litres, but a shower takes about 100+ litres of water.

If one regulates the flow to just what is required (which doesn't happen in most cases) the shower uses less water, but that doesn't happen in most cases. So, I stand corrected.

Originally Posted by DriverLess

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/story/bengaluru-water-shortage-crisis-water-tanker-prices-cauvery-river-summer-2506197-2024-02-23

Now for the next bit - we've been told that there would be a morning to evening eight hour water outage in our apartment in BLR, everyday, effective next week, till further notice. Takes me back to 1995 in another city when we'd fill a few buckets of water 'coz there'd be no water supply all day. Reason: The apartment was solely dependent on corporation water which was more than enough for 40 flats, but became insufficient when the next 20 got occupied.

It took a while for the lines to be modified to a) supply corporation water from the tank only to the kitchen and, b) only bore water to the bathrooms, and post that the situation was in control. This was a city with clayey soil, but rains were guaranteed good year after year.

[DriverLess]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eK76yNAM8A

- Lakes Lost/polluted
- Rivers polluted
- Failed monsoon
- No civic planning, apart from pumping more water from Cauvery.
- Uncontrolled development and misuse/abuse of water
- Dried borewells
- Water tankers unorganized, unreliable and getting expensive.

Still people are going to buy expensive real estate in the city.

[schumi_pete]

This is a topic that is close to my heart, as well as something that I know a little bit of, as I have been working for the largest pure-play water technology company in the world for many years now.

We have many issues to contend with when it comes to water use in India, but the biggest problem we have is that we don't reuse enough water and we don't do enough for water conservation. Today, we have the technology to reuse most of the water that goes waste. As an example, my firm has worked with a local brewery in Germany to reuse sewage water, disinfect it completely, treat it to the quality of potable water, which was then used by the brewery to make beer. People tasted the beer in a blind test during a trade fair, and none of them could guess the provenance of the water that the beer was made from.

I use the above as an example to say the technology exists today to do a lot more with water than we ever had the possibility to do so in the past. A lot of the water we use in a given day, think of washing clothes, vessels, the showers we take and other non-intensive uses of the resource, it is quite simple and cost-effective to treat it and reuse. What we need is investment in both centralized and de-centralized water treatment and reuse applications. One way of encouraging this investment is through policy making by the government, by way of favorable taxation, technology subsidy to encourgage uptake etc.

Agriculture is another good example of an important sector in India that has a very large water footprint. If we had capabilities for good enough centralized water treatment, we can reuse a lot of it to support farming applications. This is currently one of the big areas of focus and investment in Southern Europe, which these days has perennial shortfalls in rains.

Climate change is here to stay and it is going to get worse before it gets better, which I am dubious if it ever will. We as a society need to do more to save water and get comfortable with reusing water and investing in the treatment needed for reuse because there will come a point where it might be the only option left to us.

[libranof1987]

Lots of pertinent points raised

Things aren't much better in Pune. Most residential complexes in newer parts of town rely 100% on tankers; and majority in other areas rely partially on them, especially in the summer.

Pune is blessed with a massive network of dams and catchment areas within 50kms. But a combination of unregulated development, politics on where the water is dispersed and how much, vote bank politics and just exponential increase in the demand has meant Pune often struggles towards the fag end of the cycle.

- One major area of water wastage is RO machines. ROs have become increasingly common in most urban households for a variety of reasons (mainly, reliance on tanker / borewell water), and the amount of discharge water for every litre of treated RO water is just ridiculous.

- Next, there's a massive surge in the no. of apartment complexes going in for redevelopment. 15-20 year old buildings with 4-6 floors and 20-30 flats are being turned into 10-15 storey high-rises with ~100 flats.

Originally Posted by am1m

I got a rainwater harvesting setup done at our house a long time ago.
..
We're the only house on our street that got it done and now we're the only house that doesn't need to draw the (extremely) hard ground water and don't need to call tankers.

+1

A relative staying in one of the most water scarce regions in MH got it done at their place almost a decade back.

Now for context, this tier-2 city generally receives water for 15-20min every 3-4 days in the summer, and since almost every household installs pumps, there's a good chance you don't receive any water at all, or worse, lose water from your water, if you don't manage the valves properly.

A few years since he got rainwater harvesting done (+ channeling RO discharge water to the borewell), the water table which was several 100ft down, has come up so much that the tiles on the ground level are loosening up!

[schumi_pete]

I want to talk specifically about RO. We use a lot of RO in India, but it is better use UV or Ozone for disinfection for quite a few reasons. Firstly, you can guarantee elimination of harmful micro-organisms in both cases, which is not the case with RO given that a used or damaged membrane cannot filter out most of this.

From a water reuse standpoint, it is critical to disinfect the water with something that has a residual effect (Ozone, chemical disinfection) or with a technology that guarantees sterilisation of micro-organisms in the water (UV).

The second disadvantage with RO is obviously the wastewater that is produced. This water contains contaminants that will then need to be treated before release. This is a huge advantage of UV, Ozone and chemical disinfection.

It would better serve us to shift away from RO towards other disinfection technologies for domestic water use/reuse.