Mr Reddy designs and builds a rainwater filter

Mr Reddy one of our very experienced rainwater harvesting contractors decided to put together his own rainwater filter. It had to be of lower cost, easy on maintenance and of course do a good job of the filtration. Made with pipe fittings available in the market. Fully hand crafted - the slots, the tying up of the stainless steel mesh. 

About 6 months of research and trial and error went into putting this filter together. Each design challenge was dealt with a lot of care and effort.  Prevention of leakages, managing peak rainfall and overflow and robustness required a lot of thought and trying out with different materials. 

The most thoughtful add on feature - not available with any other commercial filter in the market - a ready brush to clean it with ! The product is still not in the market - there are enquiries from the local hardware shops though. In Beta testing. Its called KAVERI-RF100 (neatly hand written)

Wishing him all the very best  !!

The inventor and his invention

Slotted PVC pipe with stainless steel mesh

The insides

Explaining the usage

On Chai with Lakshmi

How can a residential layout go about harvesting rainwater

Wat'er We Doing: A 7 day workshop on Sustainable Water Management for children

A 7 day workshop on Bangalore Water organized by BIOME and CMCA for 13-14 years olds from various schools earlier this year. The workshop included trips to BWSSB STPs, Large Wells, Lakes, Urban Slums, Layouts and interaction with various people vis-a-vis water. The children also performed hands on experiments on ground water and water testing. A blog maintained by the kids detailing their activities is available at http://sciencefestival2012.blogspot.in/. This workshop was part of a larger programme for a French American Science Festival where various schools are exploring issues/solutions around water and sanitation. This is  movie that documents the workshop and will be screened at the festival.

Playspaces for the Visually Impaired

Biome helps design thoughtful and sensitive playspaces for the visually impaired at 2 Blind Schools in Bangalore - Sree Ramana Maharishi Academy for the Blind, JP Nagar and  Mathru Education Trust for the Blind at Yelahanka alongwith Kilikili. With support from Bosch

Of water tankers and borewell motor thefts

1. Saw perhaps one of the largest water tankers in Bangalore . It could have been 24KL. On Old Airport Road

Tried getting a picture to capture the enormity but could not quite succeed. The tanker was still to be labelled.

2. Heard of 2 strange thefts - one a failed attempt and another one successful. There are thieves out to steal borewell motors. In both cases the people dependent on the borewells had to go without water for a few days after. In the case of the failed attempt - the motor stayed in but got disconnected. In the successful theft the motor was of course gone. City water stories never fail to amaze.

Rajiv - hands on - taking down a filter for cleaning

Anything here ? 

Releasing water to lighten the filter

The clogged filter

Job done

Recently we had a case of a clogged filter and a lot of overflow because of that. Here Rajiv helps take down the filter cartridge for cleaning. Online Rainwater filters with a very fine mesh can get clogged even with the tiniest particles of dirt. A rainwater filter has to be designed to optimise the capture of rainfall of appropriate quantity and quality

Water stories in Bangalore - A Crisis or an opportunity ?

A Crisis or an opportunity ?

Walking on a narrow a mud-road in Vignana Nagar, I need to follow a water tanker “watering” the road to keep dust levels down, to get to my destination.  And as I walk in to the layout I am headed to – a plush row-housing layout of about 200 households on 28 acres - the story of its water begins to unfold. 

This layout is right next to the Doddanekkundi lake and was built around 7 years ago.  With no access to piped water supply from the city, the layout was completely dependent on ground-water.  Six borewells with depths varying from 200ft to 500ft extracted water from mother earth meeting the needs of the layout for all domestic purposes, to water the gardens and to run a club-house.  The water was supplied after centralized treatment through a hi-tech set of hydro-pneumatic pumps maintaining pre-set pressures in the pipes in all houses.  All the waste-water was treated in an STP. In the beginning at low occupancies while STP treated water was used for gardening, it did not suffice.  All the houses were consumption metered, though initially the meters were not seen as too important. 

Time passed and occupancy increased. The area also started developing with other apartments and layouts emerging around, each of them digging their borewells too.  The yields of borewells this layout had started decreasing and finally the borwells started going dry.  Water tanker suppliers as a substitute source were not always reliable. The layout had to respond.  The Resident welfare association (RWA)  started taking the water consumption meters seriously - and introduced increasing block tariffs.  With increased occupancy they had more treated waste-water and they ensured that no gardening was done with fresh water.  The RWA engaged with people to control demand.  And they brought down the demand from around 500 lpcd down to a more acceptable 250 lpcd.  “In our hydrpneumatic system a lot of water goes down the flush”, acknowledges one of the RWA representatives.  Water scarcity continued to be a reality, and so was the search for augmenting supply.

Storing and using harvested rooftop rainwater was an option – but given the hydro-pneumatic pumping systems they had, it was not easy to “plug” this solution in easily.  The investigations of how rainwater harvesting could help solve the problems continued.   In around 5 years, however, all their borewells went dry and they had to dig new borewells.  In the last two years, 3 new borewells have been dug.  Notably, all these 3 new borewells are between 800ft – 1000ft in depth – much deeper than their earlier borewells.  Rainwater harvesting now recharges groundwater in this layout.  The dried borewells are being used as recharge structures – rainfall runoff is diverted, filtered and recharged into some of these dried borewells.  Apart from these 170 shallow 10 ft wells recharge ground water too.  “We understand that the water recharged may not come to us”, says an RWA committee member, “but as long as it recharges groundwater, we will not ask who is using it.  We will continue to recharge, and we will try and continue to invest in recharge”.

Does this story not reflect what is happening in Bangalore (and perhaps other cities in India)?  And does the action of this layout’s not represent some of the solutions Bangalore needs for its water story to be fixed?  And I see these stories repeating itself in house after house, apartment after apartment, layout after layout.    Should Bangalore fix its water problems a house, an apartment and a layout at a time?  In every crisis, it is said, lies an opportunity.  Can Bangalore seize it?

Avinash Krishnamurthy

7 july 2012