A Brief Report

On
Overall Analysis of Existing Storm Water
Drainage System
And
A Proposal for a Cost Effective Solution
By:
B. Naveen Chakravarthy
R.Srinivasan
B. VinothKumar
J. Niveytha
A. Sowmiya
A. Shanthakumari

Abstract:
Based on our observations of the existing storm water drains which are normally
constructed by the side of roads, we came to know about some serious implications regarding
their construction and maintenance. Here is a brief description of about how these storm water
drains are a sort of an out-dated technique. We also seek to propose a new technique to
minimize these disadvantages of storm water drains which are specified below.

Storm Water Drains Disadvantages:

Storm water drains literally need a heavy sanction from both the central and state
governments which is obvious from many government orders, which can easily be
found on the web.
Every house in a corporation needs to have a septic tank as per norms, but this not the
reality in most cases. Since shallow drains of 18 to 30 trenches are dug for storm
water drainage purposes, they literally become waste water drains for such houses
sooner or later. Corporation has to take greater pain to clear the blocks in the drains
formed by waste water and suspended impurities in the storm water like leaves etc.
This causes flooding in the drains when a heavy rain occurs and troubleshooting it
becomes a headache to the corporation.
This waste water, when it reaches the destinations, which is usually a water body or an
artificial reservoir, pollutes them to a greater extent.
Apart from all these visible damages, there are some other collateral damages like
felling the trees, road scratches due to the movement of heavy earth movers,
discomfort for residents of the locality.
Discomfort for the residents takes a multifold dimension when it comes to the postconstruction of the drains for the fact that they have to build slabs across the drain for
the purpose of entry into their houses and vehicle movement. It is estimated that
residents spend from their own pocket, a sum equivalent to 15-20% of the estimate of
the storm water drain project, for this purpose.
In case of occurrence of any unpredictable damage, repairing is indeed a tedious
process.
Above all these setbacks, Coimbatore does not receive flooding rain throughout the
year. North east monsoon becomes dry when it reaches Coimbatore and South West
monsoon is partially shielded by Western Ghats. So roughly, we get flood only for
about 10 days a year. We think it would not be wise to spend such a huge sum on this
storm water drain project.

Our Proposal:
These are what we think to be the advantages of this unnamed idea as of now.
We do not focus to carry all the storm water to a distant reservoir. We aim to use the
water for recharging the ground water locally through a rain water harvesting portal.
By surveying the contour of the region, the collection point is identified and water is
transported to the collection point through a saucer shaped open drain.
To minimize liable damages, the drain is planned to be cast as modular units and not
monolithically. The shape of the modular unit will be as in Fig 1.

Fig 1

Possible Advantages:
The block will be in such a way that the vehicles can cross over with a slight bump,
nothing more of the sort of an inverted speed breaker.
If it ever gets clogged with leaves, storm water could easily lift it off. And needless to
say, clearing it off is absolutely easy.
If any unit is damaged, it can be easily replaced.
It rests on solid ground and no intricate design is required. The block will need to
carry just the wheel load with minimum safety factor applied.
As it may be imagined, the estimate of the project turns out to be much lower than the
existing scheme.
The scheme focuses on recharging ground water locally and in mitigating the cost
incurred in transporting the water to faraway water bodies.

 Water flows through natural contours and no pumping is necessary.

There is no necessity to cut down the trees in the path. We can just take a detour round
the trees.
Since modular units are used, transportation is easy and plan implementation is much
easier than in-situ construction.
Since the block rests wholly on the ground, high strength concrete design is not
needed.

Indirect Advantages:
Whenever roads are laid, its level increases every time. The long run consequence is
that, the houses are at a level below the road level. Hence water starts to flood the
houses. When the above said plan is implemented and road level is increased, it causes
slip of the vehicle. By this way, the corporation would be in a state to maintain a
benchmark for the road construction, thereby preventing the flooding of houses which
are in the vicinity of roads.

So, we do hereby seek your permission to undertake this task as our academic
project and we hope this would enable us to gain some knowledge about rain water
harvesting. By this we could know about peoples ideas and the same may positively affect
our improvisation of this concept.