Different Ways of Collecting & Using Rainwater

Posted by Guest on Jan 19, 2012 in Featured, Rainwater Collection | 0 comments

At present, the ancient practice of harvesting rainwater has been revived due to the issue of fresh water supply shortage in the whole world. Since the population is consuming more water today, people are searching for alternate sources of fresh water. Rain is a very good alternate source because it is free and can be easily collected with the use of simple and complex harvesting mechanisms. Rainwater can be used for a variety of purposes such as irrigation, cleaning, washing of clothes and many more.

If you want to collect rainwater and store it for future use, you need to familiarize yourself with the different harvesting techniques used by people. Here are a few of the ways to harvest rainwater:

There are two primary techniques of harvesting rainwater—the recharge to ground water and the storage of rainwater on surface for future use. The former is a relatively new concept of rainwater harvesting while the latter is the more traditional technique that uses check dams, weirs, underground tanks, ponds and many more. On the other hand, the recharge to groundwater technique uses the following structures:

• Trenches - Constructed when a permeable stream is available at a shallow distance. A trench may be 0.5 to 1 meter deep and 10 to 20 meters long depending on the amount of water. Then the trench is filled with materials that filter the water.
• Dug wells - These are used as recharge structures and the water must pass via filter media before letting it flow towards the dug well.
• Pits - These are constructed for recharging shallow aquifer. They are usually 1 to 2 meters wide and 3 meters deep and are filled with gravel, boulders and coarse sand.
• Hand pumps - Use for recharging the deep or shallow aquifers when water availability is limited. The water passes through the filter media placed inside.
• Recharge wells - These are 100-300meter in diameter and are constructed for recharging deeper aquifers.
• Lateral shafts with bore wells - Recharges the upper and deeper aquifers.
• Recharge shafts - Used for recharging shallow aquifer located below the clayey surface.
• Spreading technique - Used when permeable strata begins from the top.

Simple means of collecting rainwater include the following:

• Using barrels to catch water from a downspout.
• Tarps are installed from the roof and rainwater is collected at the bottom via the use of water containers.
• In the ancient times, people use coconut shells to harvest rainwater