Meet the rain catchers

Indians during ancient times worshipped air, water, fire, earth and ‘space’ or the aakash. They recongised that these are the life-sustaining forces and the most vital ones too. But today, how many of us realise the value of these elements, leave alone worshipping them? While praying to the Rain Gods is still being practised to invoke rain, here are a few youngsters who’ve realised that we cannot continue for too long with depleting groundwater and have embarked on a mission to save water. Meet young architects — Sai Prasad, Bhanu Manthry and Omar Javeed who’ve taken up the rainwater-harvesting mission in a big way by creating a rainwater harvesting filter — not just to eke out a living but to make living itself comfortable for urban folks who are on the brink of a water crisis.

“This year, the monsoon hasn’t been too kind to us, which is the very reason why every householder should take up this project,” says Bhanu. Talking about their venture Ecocentric Enterprises, he says, “Hyderabad experiences an average of 760mm/annum rainfall ie., for every 1,000 sq ft of roof area we get around 55,000 litres of water per annum. This can suffice for 100 days of water requirement for a family of five. As a result the family need not depend on the borewell and can save a lot on electricity.”

Talking about the need for introducing rainwater filters in Hyderabad, Sai Prasad says, “Rainwater harvesting is a ‘must’ for every house, apartment and office complex, which helps both in storing and recharging groundwater. Traditional harvesting pits are very effective and useful in alluvial and murram soil conditions, but when it comes to conditions like our city’s subterranean soil, which is mostly granitic and rocky, water percolation into the ground is very difficult and often rare. Rainwater storage through ‘Rainy-Filter’ can be easily implemented in urban areas where space is a constraint. These filters are extremely popular in Bangalore and have been in usage for over a decade and hence we decided to bring them to Hyderabad. This device can be easily installed in existing buildings also, it is easy to maintain and fast to install. Groundwater recharge techniques through “v-wire injection wells” are very effective for Hyderabad. As rainwater is a pure form of water, with basic filtration we can use this water for various purposes thereby saving the money which is otherwise spent on water tankers.”

Talking about the need for installing a rainwater filter, Sai Prasad says that in cities like ours where space is a rare commodity it is impractical to think of huge pits. Not only that the high maintenance costs dearly as the filtration media needs to be removed and changed every year. We have realised that the design is obsolete especially as our city’s subterranean soil is granitic. Taking all these limitations into account we created a filter which is an effective device compared to rainwater harvesting pits.

Their motto ‘Save Rain Water, Save Money and Save Environment’ is surely catching up. The proud trio says “We have finished rainwater harvesting projects saving around 5 crore litres of water per annum and the count is still on. Our focus is to serve Residential Welfare Associations to install our solutions. Our company has installed over 200 filters in Hyderabad – mostly in the Kondapur, Gachibowli belt and we have couple of other prestigious projects in the pipeline.” Those who don’t want to end up ‘parched’ need to take up this smart solution which will not only save their water bills but the water-tanker ones too!