DOMESTIC ROOFTOP WATER HARVESTING- A CASE STUDY

Although water is as important for survival of human being as much as food, air etc, but hardly any attention is paid for its economical use and conservation of this precious resource. Due to indiscriminate pumping of ground water, the water table is going down abnormally and if the problem is not given a serious look, then the future generations may have to face severe crisis of water. Rains are the main source of water and if rain water is harvested, the scarcity of water can be eliminated altogether. This is an ideal solution of water problem where there is inadequate groundwater supply quantitatively and qualitatively and surface sources are either lacking or insignificant. Rain water is bacteriologically pure, free from organic matter and soft in nature. In urban areas, rain water available from rooftop of buildings, paved and unpaved areas goes waste. This water can be stored in tank and can be used directly and also indirectly by diverting to recharge the aquifers through existing GW tapping arrangements and thereafter can be utilized gainfully at the time of need. The paper aims towards the development of the framework for domestic rooftop harvesting for drinking water. The paper is based on the analysis of survey record of around 50 houses of different rooftop areas of peri-urban area of Dhule city. The estimation of the appropriate size of the water tanks and their costs required to fulfill the annual drinking water demands through Domestic Rooftop Water Harvesting (DRWH) from rooftop of different areas are done. A mathematical equation expressing the relationship between the required size of water tank and different rooftop areas is developed. Th