Interlinked tanks and a pipe leading to a third tank | Photos by the writer
Unrestricted amounts of water at the turn of a tap is something largely taken for granted by the shrinking percentage of the population that has water — or who can afford to pay extortionate fees for tanker water of dubious quality. But, unless its monsoon season, it’s a luxury for the rest of the population, who eke it out on a day-to-day basis when they can get it.
According to a recent report, half of our population can now only afford to eat one meal a day and the number of children suffering from malnutrition increases all the time. These stark realities give me a major headache when offering gardening advice as, unless practising xeriscape gardening (dry gardening), growing anything at all consumes massive quantities of precious water when looked at over an annual period of time. This is why, whenever the opportunity arises in this column, producing food is now given precedence over purely ornamental plants.
Water-saving gardening methods are, of course, promoted whenever possible, as is the relatively simple recycling of grey water/household water. But, quite possibly, rainwater harvesting, mist/dew/humidity harvesting, have not been given the serious attention they deserve, so let’s try to correct this.
Harvesting rainwater is essential in this water-scarce era
Rainwater harvesting is incredibly simple and, depending on how you go about it, is as low- or high-cost as you wish it to be. A bucket placed to collect drips from roofs is the simplest example and an entire roof edge gutter system, with its interlinked downpipes and a network of above or below ground storage tanks is at the opposite end of the price spectrum. All things considered, it seems rather unfair as only a tiny segment of the population — who can already afford to buy and use copious amounts of water — can, ironically, invest enough capital to benefit from the latter … although, as always, there are exceptions, as necessity is the mother of invention.
When faced with a sudden water problem — the house spring, on which we depended in Bhurban, vanished in the massive earthquake of October 2005 — and with very little extra cash on hand, a solution had to be found fast. The small house already had rainwater collection guttering across the front section, with a downpipe draining into a large barrel. The water thus harvested was used to irrigate plant pots only in the front garden. It was time to rethink and redesign this system, massively expanding it in the process.
The first step was to have guttering made for the rest of the house roof. The work was done by a local blacksmith on an urgent basis. Luckily, he quite enjoyed the challenge of first making the guttering, and thenfixing it firmly in place with downpipes, initially leading into large drums, at various places. Filters made out of scrunched wire netting (the size of tennis balls) then inserted into nylon stockings, were placed at the top of each downpipe and cleaned regularly. These were surprisingly efficient.