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Feasibility Study of Rainwater Harvesting As a Saving Option of Ground water

Case Study Area: Mirpur DOHS, Dhaka

Article · April 2019

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.2632710

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 Journal of Water Resources and Pollution Studies
e-ISSN: 2581-5326
Volume 4 Issue 1

Feasibility Study of Rainwater Harvesting As a Saving Option of

Ground water
Case Study Area: Mirpur DOHS, Dhaka
1
Romana Saila, 2Mustafa Tanveer Hasan
1
Assistant Professor
Department of Civil Engineering
University of Information Technology and Sciences, Dhaka, Bangladesh
2
Junior Design Engineer
Euro-Consult Mott MacDonald, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Email: 1romana.saila@uits.edu.bd
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2632710

Abstract
For the work purpose, Mirpur DOHS has been selected as case study area. We collected
rainfall data and community water demand data for the analysis. Our main focus is to save
groundwater and use rainwater from harvesting. After analysis we have got Annual average
rainfall is 6.47 m. Annual rainfall volume is 1310626 m3. Total Annual water demand in the
area from 25 liter/sec extraction in a day is 2365200 m3. Total annual water saving can be
made up to 55%. Monthly % savings have been also shown in the table in the result and
discussions section. Annual Water cost from demand at a rate of 11.02 Tk per 1000 L water
is 26064504 BDT. Net Cost savings from rainfall harvesting is 11621402 BDT which is 44%
of the total water demand cost. Net cost savings will not be achieved fully as there will be
some treatment cost for rainwater. Maximum rainfall over the past 11years in a single day is
448 mm. So, maximum rainfall volume in a single day from per roof is 70 m3. Underground
reservoir capacity in a building at Mirpur DOHS is 32' x 14' x 11' that means 139 m3 in
volume. So, harvesting rainwater can be easily accommodated in the underground reservoir
using a primary treatment option like filtration.

Keywords: Rainfall harvesting, Maximum rainfall, Water demand, Ground water, Ground
water table

INTRODUCTION amount of ground water need to be extracted

Bangladesh is blessed with abundant
rainfall annually. Over the last ten years,
both intensity and frequency of rainfall are
increased. Most of the time, such amount
of rainwater goes to storm sewer as a
runoff. Whereas Dhaka, the Capital of
Bangladesh is over densely populated city
face scarcity of pure drinking water. The
surface water source of Dhaka is also
limited and polluted. Hence, water
treatment cost also becomes high.
Sometimes, a whole community use
ground water as their daily household
purpose. Mirpur DOHS is a place in
Dhaka city where resident people solely
use ground water for their domestic and
non-domestic purposes. As result, huge
daily to meet up overall water demand.
Ground water is one of the important non-
renewable resources and also one of the
purest forms of water. Using at such a huge
rate of extraction could have adverse effect
on ground water reservations as well as on
Environment of Dhaka city. So, as an
alternative option of consuming ground
water, rainwater harvesting could be the
most promising one.
Literature Reviews:
Water plays a significant role for survival
of human being as like as food, air etc., but
barely any attention is paid for its
economical use and preservation of this
non-renewable resource. The water table is

10 Page 10-15 © MAT Journals 2019. All Rights Reserved

 Journal of Water Resources and Pollution Studies
going down abnormally due to improper
pumping of ground water. Our future
generation will suffer the most if this
problem is not assessed with foremost
priority. Rains are the available source of
water and if rain water is harvested, the
scarcity of water can be eliminated
altogether with the conservation of ground
water table.
Arun Kumar Dwivedi and Sudhir Singh
Bhadauria proposed a domestic roof top
Harvesting for Dulhi city due to over
population and higher usage levels of
water in that area. This proposal is
intended to cope up the water demand
from harvesting rain along with available
surface water resources. They provided
sizes and cost of water tanks in which
harvested rainwater will be stored. They
also calculated the unit water price from
the harvested rainwater. They did all the
jobs using model equations [3].
Ifte Chowdhury and Farzana Sultana did
research on rainwater harvesting for
domestic consumption in Bangladesh.
The fact that driven to conduct the
research was the continuous problem
with water supplies, inadequate amount
to meet the minimum requirements for
potable water. Moreover, surface water
is being contaminated by both industrial
and human pollutions; rapidly
increasing demands results in
exploitation of ground water at a faster
rate than it is replenished by recharge.
In this purpose, they identified and
analyzed the rainwater harvesting
methods of Bangladesh utilizing
programming and visualization to assess
the efficiency of the solution. They
proposed a solution for rainwater
harvesting solution for a typical
multistoried residential apartment in
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e-ISSN: 2581-5326
Volume 4 Issue 1
Dhaka, Bangladesh [2].
Rain water harvesting has become a
universal solution for water supply, water
scarcity and ground water reservation.
Many countries across the globe are doing
research and developing rain water
harvesting system to adopt this promising
water conservation technology both in
rural and urban areas. In South Africa, a
pilot program of Rain water harvesting had
been run to improve water supply [1].
Despite these, rain water quality assurance
is also an integrate part of rainwater
harvesting. Lots of researches are also
done and are being continued to enhance
the harvested rain water quality to make
the water portable. Initially, there may be
some installation cost for rain water
treatment but it is worth to adopt this
technology in terms of ground water
extraction and in water scarcity situation.
Method
Data Collection: Water demand data and
numbers of households of the selective
area were collected from the Mirpur
DOHS Parishod. Rainfall data of all the
stations available in Dhaka were collected
from Bangladesh Water Development
Board (BWDB) [4]. Mirpur DOHS has
total 1298 apartments. Most of those are
six stored buildings with an area of 2100
sft. It has four pump houses operated by
Dhaka WASA. Three pumps are operated
at a rate of 25 liter/sec in a day; one pump
holds at rest during their operation [5].
Data Analysis: After collecting the rainfall
data of past eleven years (2007-2017), data
were analyzed in Excel to find out
tentatively how much water can be saved
from rainwater harvesting and whether it is
feasible for the community or not. Below
is the flow chart of the method.
 Journal of Water Resources and Pollution Studies
e-ISSN: 2581-5326
Volume 4 Issue 1

Rainfall data
Selection and data collection from the collection from
selective area BWDB (2007-2017)

Data Analysis by Excel

Table 1: Annual Average Rainfall Calculation in Excel

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual avg
18.15 56.45 147.35 403.15 722.41 1266.53 1612.8 1309.02 831.60 579.67 92.70 23.38 6472.61

Results and Discussions

Table 2: Monthly percentage covered from Rainwater harvesting
Rainfall % covered
Volume per month
per from
Month Monthy Avg (mm) Monthy Avg(m) month(m3) rainfall
Jan 18.15 0.02 3674.24 2
Feb 56.45 0.06 11430.45 6
Mar 147.35 0.15 29835.69 15
Apr 403.15 0.40 81633.96 42
May 722.41 0.72 146279.17 75
June 1266.53 1.27 256456.57 132
July 1612.75 1.61 326563.44 168
Aug 1309.02 1.31 265060.47 136
Sep 831.60 0.83 168389.02 87
Oct 579.67 0.58 117376.77 60
Nov 92.70 0.09 18770.64 10
Dec 23.38 0.02 4734.17 2
Annual Avg 6472.61 6.47

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 Journal of Water Resources and Pollution Studies
e-ISSN: 2581-5326
Volume 4 Issue 1

According to table 2 after analysis, it is three months June, July and August
found that rainwater even exceeds the (shown in bold numbers).
demand in Monsoon period consisting of

Monthy and Annual % Savings from Rainwater harvesting

1.89 5.88 15.35

55.41
2.44 41.99
9.66

60.38
86.62

Jan Feb Mar Apr Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Saving

Figure 1: Monthly and Annual percentage savings from Rainwater harvesting.

Fig.1 shows the highest percentage saving Total annual savings can be achieved up to
in the month of September that is 86.62 %. 55%.

Annual water demand cost and Annual savings from harvesting

Rainwater in BDT

11621402

26064504
14443102

Annual water cost from demand Cost of annual harvested water Gross Savings

Figure 2: Annual water demand cost VS Annual Savings from harvested water in BDT.

Total Annual water demand in the area at
25 liter/sec per day extraction rate is
2365200 m3 and annual Water cost from
this demand at a rate of 11.02 taka per
1000 L [6] water is 26064504 BDT. If
rainwater can be harvested, annual cost of
that water would be 14443102 BDT. So,
net savings can be achieved in terms of
BDT 11621402 which is 44% of the total
water demand cost. Net cost savings
cannot be achieved fully as there will be
some treatment cost for rainwater.

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 Journal of Water Resources and Pollution Studies
Underground Reservoir Capacity VS Max Rainfall Volume in
a month (m3)
122
Max monthly rainfall volume
Figure 3: Underground Reservoir Capacity and Max Volume of Rainfall in a month.
Fig. 3 presumes the fact that the maximum
underground reservoir capacity of a house
building is 122 m3 while maximum rainfall
occurrence can be 70 m3 in a month. So,
every month it is quite possible to
accommodate the harvested rainfall in the
underground reservoir. There needs to
have a treatment provision for harvested
rainwater such as filtration before entering
into the reservoir.
CONCLUSIONS
From the analysis it is obvious that rooftop
rainwater harvesting is feasible in Mirpur
DOHS, Dhaka. It is also competent
according to available rainfall and
underground reservoir capacity of each
household. If the rainwater is harvested in
this area, people can save good extend of
their water demand cost. Along with this,
the ground water resource can be saved
properly for the future generation. Most
importantly, it can keep the environment
and people safe and sound as too much
ground water extraction can lead to the
devastating natural phenomena such as
land escaping, scarcity of ground water,
uplifting harmful mineral constituent like
arsenic.
14 Page 10-15 © MAT Journals 2019. All Rights Reserved
e-ISSN: 2581-5326
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70
Capacity of reservoir
Recommendations
• Mirpur DOHS has a few apartments
more than 2100 sft and has a very big
shopping complex (recently
completed) which are not considered
here. More accurate rainfall volume
measurement could be done by
incorporating those.
• Necessary plumbing arrangements
have to be done for drawing rainwater
from roof top to underground reservoir.
• Detailed treatment options need to be
assessed
REFERENCES
1. Thomas, T. (1998). Domestic water
supply using rainwater harvesting.
Building Research and Information,
26(2), 94-101.
2. Chowdhury, I. and Sultana, F. (2012).
Rainwater Harvesting for Domestic
Consumption in Bangladesh. Journal
of Biourbanism (JBU) II (2012) 2, 87-
98.
3. Arun Kumar Dwivedi and Sudhir
Singh Bhadauria (2009). Domestic
Rooftop Water Harvesting- A Case
Study. ARPN Journal of Engineering
and Applied Sciences, v. 4, no. 6,
1819-6608.
 Journal of Water Resources and Pollution Studies
e-ISSN: 2581-5326
Volume 4 Issue 1

4. Bangladesh Water Development Cite this article as:

Board. Government agency Romana Saila, & Mustafa Tanveer Hasan.
responsible for Surface water and (2019). Feasibility Study of Rainwater
Ground water management in Harvesting As a Saving Option of Ground
Bangladesh. water Case Study Area: Mirpur DOHS,
5. Mirpur DOHS Parishod. Dhaka. Journal of Water Resources and
http://www.mirpurdohs.net.bd/ Pollution Studies, 4(1), 10–15.
6. Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2632710
Authority. https://dwasa.org.bd/

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