Rainwater harvesting at accept society.

I have already written about the good work being done by ACCEPT society. You can read in detail about accept on here .

ACCEPT is located off Hennur road in Bangalore where the water situation is pathetic. As a matter of fact the land given to ACCEPT by government of karnataka was a landfill land. So the land was virtually given for free to ACCEPT and few more NGOs around them.

ACCEPT is run by a gentleman by name Raju matthew. He left his booming business in USA to start this NGO to rehabilitate and care for HIV patients, particularly children. To reduce the water problem faced by ACCEPT and to contribute his bit for the environment, Raju Matthew decided to install a rainwater harvesting system at the NGO. For funding, he contacted KPMG, a leading audit firm.Thankfully KPMG agreed to fund the project through their CSR arm. Today the campus of ACCEPT society captures and uses directly for domestic purposes about 6,75,000 liters of water annually and puts about 10,00000 liters of water into the water table. every year. This is a fantastic example of how precious water falling on one's head can be used effectively using very simple technologies.

It is not the technology but the far sightedness of Mr Matthew that has to be appreciated. Though rainwater harvesting is doing its rounds in the academic circles for quite some time now, it is yet to get wide scale acceptance and appreciation in the society. Only now government is contemplating seriously about bringing a law to make rainwater harvesting mandatory. Mr Matthew had confidence on the technology and took great personal interest in executing the project.
In the grip of a very tight financial rope walk, Matthew persuaded a firm to fund his venture. In fact he always wanted to do this. He had collected all the articles written by colleague in the Hindu on the subject of rainwater harvesting. Moment he got the funding, he immediately got the ball rolling.

I was involved with this project in capacity of a consultant for KPMG. Below is a small write up on the technical aspects of the project at ACCEPT.

ACCEPT Society runs a charitable care and support home for HIV patients in Dodda Gubbi off Hennur Road on about 3.5 acres of land. There is a main building housing about 35 patients. There is also a children's home for about 24 children. About 20+staff is also present on campus. There is also a small dairy,poultry and piggery on campus. Some agriculture is also done on the premises. There are totally 3 tube-wells out of which one has completely dried up and the yields from the other two are quite low. Currently water is sourced from 2 tube-wells for all domestic purposes apart from private water supply through tankers . At present Accept society is not connected by BWSSB (municipal) piped water supply or underground sewerage. Approximately 10KL of water is required per day for domestic use

There is a large open perennial well outside of this campus. Water from this well is also used for irrigation. ACCEPT Society wants to secure its water sources (ensure that tube-wells do not run dry). In this context Accept society invested on roof top rainwater harvesting and ground water recharge with financial assistance from KPMG foundation.

Rooftop rainwater harvesting:

Rooftop rainwater harvesting is done for the main building, the conference room and the cowshed. 10” PVC gutters are fixed on two sides and rear side of the building. After first rain separation, the water is filtered by overground filters. Totally 6 filters of different capacities are installed at various positions to filter the water. All the filtered water flows into a 25KL underground sump through underground piping. (The sump roof is also serving as a training area and a good platform for drying utensils)

Submersible sump is installed in this sump to pump the water to the main sump. The main sump is about 13 KL capacity. The water from this sump is pumped to overhead tanks.

Provision is made to either pump the harvested water to the main sump or to take the water for gardening through a valve mechanism.

Details of the catchment, storage and cost are given in the table.

Parameter	Measure
Total roof Area (terrace area)	760 m2
Estimated Daily demand	10 KL
Size of rainwater sump constructed	25 KL
Recharge Well	One recharge well of size 5 feet dia and 20 feet deep and another 7 feet dia and 30 feet deep
Cost of system	Rs 4,10,000

Ground water Recharge:

Apart from this, two recharge wells are dug to recharge the aquifer. The surface runoff from the field and large open areas is channeled into a drain. 5 silt traps are constructed at appropraite places to hold the silt. The relatively clear water which flows over the silt trap is filtered through an in-drain filter and then the water flows into the recharge well. One well is 5 feet in diameter and 20 feet deep and the other 7 feet in diameter and 30 feet deep. Both the wells are yielding water. The 5 feet dia well started yielding at around 18 feet and the 7 feet dia well around 25 feet. The last 5 feet was dug by continuous dewatering using a dewatering pump.