Rain Barrel Project: Rainwater Harvesting for Sustainable Water Supply in Urban Households

Severe droughts have brought an impact to many areas in Indonesia: diminishing water supply. Factors that contribute are mainly deforestation and unregulated ground water drilling. With an increasing population, the demand for water is also escalating. As a consequence, many residential areas and industries are extracting ground water to fulfill their daily demands. This has led to the depletion of ground water down to a significant low level. The city of Bandung is dangerously critical in terms of ground water supply as it is predicted to be dry in 2025 (ADB, 2016). Driven with a sense of urgency, this project aims to provide an option for urban households of north Bandung to manage surface water by rainwater harvesting, using rain barrels. It is a system that collects rainwater runoff for later use. Rain barrels can be especially important in arid or heavily populated urban areas to reduce demands on increasingly limited water supply. Rainwater harvesting systems are measured by the area for collecting water (in m2 or ft2) and the volume of water they store (in liters or gallons) (Feehan et al., 2014). To size a system for a site, areas chosen for the rainwater collecting site should have enough volume of water for occupants, given the site's rainfall patterns. Data is required to calculate the rainwater harvest rate, occupants’ needs, rainfall and efficiency (www.watercache.com). In addition, the system should also include a filter so water can be used for washing. Once the data is collected, then the cost of installing the system can be estimated, where the cost can be applied to individual households or shared in communities. The application of a rainwater harvesting system can be a sustainable solution in areas where water is scarce, as well as a positive environmental impact in the long run.