Water – that one element without which we cannot imagine our lives. Billions of dollars, absolute luxury and no amount of social status can buy water if we lose our reserves. With the water crisis looming over our heads as global warming peaks, it is of mandatory necessity to protect the reserves that we have. While rainwater harvesting helps to not waste rain water, the effort goes to waste if we do not budget our water usage. 

Ashok Tower from Mumbai understands the value of saving water while ensuring they collect the rainwater that graces the premises during the rainy seasons. This 1036 unit co-operative housing society has opted for a state of the art rainwater harvesting system while simultaneously taking steps to reduce water consumption in the community.

Rainwater Harvesting

Seeing thousands of litres of rainwater being drained off and wasted caused discomfort to the community especially when the water shortage was starting to hit close at home. That served the inspiration to install a good rainwater harvesting system.

The community faced challenges with the rainy season passing by. They had to understand the drain pipeline infrastructure of the buildings, strategise on 100% rainwater harvesting, convincing community members on approving the project and to procure plumbing supplies.

Overcoming the challenges with their Facility Manager, the community has installed rainwater harvesting in their premise. The rain water is directed from the terraces to a tank dedicated to collect this water. Each tower is equipped with a 60Kl tank. The pump and pipe line is connected between these tanks and bore-well with in-house stock material saving expenses of almost Rs 21,000. Total 905 KL rain water has been transferred from rain water to recharge the existing bore-well. On the other hand in Tower A, B & C, water collected from rain is used for flushing reducing the use of BMC water supplied to the building. Total 810 KL rain water is transferred from  rain water to flushing tank till date. A whopping total of 1715 KL rainwater is used till date in Phase 1.

This initiative has not only helped Ashok Tower to fight their water crisis but has also ensured economic savings. The reuse of rainwater has saved them over 2 lakhs INR.

Water Saving

Started in January 2019, excess use of water by the residents and reading drought reports motivated Ashok Tower to start saving the water they were harvesting.

The activities done are as follows:

1. Provided low flow aerators for all hand washbasin sensor taps & provision of low flow faucets in All apartments and in Common area amounting to 963 aerators.
2. Converting Fresh Water fountain to STP water during summer.
3. Increasing the Output of STP plant from 70 KLD to 250 KLD per day by rectifying the snags of 10 year old STP plants.
4. Fixing of water taps as initiative motivated by “Drop Dead” Foundation Saving 161 KL per Annum from Apartments and 143 KL per Annum from Common area.
5. Water Saving Campaign was organized in which all the household and community staff were trained to Save water.
6. Introducing Eco-friendly car washing vendor.

The impact of this proactive measure shows brilliantly :

1. Implementation of Aerators has resulted of water saving of 14,445 KL per annum saving Rs. 72,225/-.
2. Increasing of STP Output provided 72000 KLD of recycled water per annum for flush and gardening purposes saving Rs. 3,60,000/-.
3. An eco-friendly car washer was introduced at site for providing additional revenue generation of 5 % of Society on monthly revenue.
4. Fixing taps has saved 304 KL per annum of water going in to drains drop by drop.

We are back with Rise High Awards 2020! This is your chance to show your appreciation for MCs, Community Staff, Residents, etc. who have risen high and above the call of duty to ensure excellence in gated community management, despite the challenges of the Pandemic. Click here to nominate your Community Heroes.