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Rainwater Harvesting Calculation Guide

The document discusses how to calculate the amount of rainwater that can be harvested based on mean annual rainfall and roof area. It provides an example calculating that a roof of 120m^2 in an area with 450mm of average annual rainfall could collect 48,600 liters of water per year. It also discusses reservoir sizing, providing an example where a house with a 9m by 6.5m roof would collect 23,895 liters of rainwater annually, which could be stored in a single 23,000 liter reservoir located at the edge of the house. Smaller storage tanks or two connected tanks could also be used if required.

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Saku Mali
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544 views2 pages

Rainwater Harvesting Calculation Guide

The document discusses how to calculate the amount of rainwater that can be harvested based on mean annual rainfall and roof area. It provides an example calculating that a roof of 120m^2 in an area with 450mm of average annual rainfall could collect 48,600 liters of water per year. It also discusses reservoir sizing, providing an example where a house with a 9m by 6.5m roof would collect 23,895 liters of rainwater annually, which could be stored in a single 23,000 liter reservoir located at the edge of the house. Smaller storage tanks or two connected tanks could also be used if required.

Uploaded by

Saku Mali
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Rain water catchment area

To calculate the rainwater amount which can be harvested, the mean annual rainfall figure
is commonly used. Mean annual is the statistical average calculated on the basis of
measured rainfall over many years.

1. Reservoir capacity
let us consider a roof of 120 m² in an area with mean annual rainfall of 450 mm. We
assume that less than 100% of the calculated amount of water will be collected. This
is due to unavoidable small leakages in the gutter downpipe system, or rainfalls
which are too light to produce sufficient runoff, or a possible overflow of gutters in the
case of an extreme downpour. For this reason we can generally assume that only
90% of the rainwater can be collected

For calculation we take the following formula:

mean annual rainfall in mm x area in m² x runoff factor = collected rainwater in litres.


In our example this means:

450 x 120 x 0.9 = 48 600 litres.

2. Reservoir size
Ex. A house with a roof area of 9.00 x 6.50 m is to be furnished with
catchment and storage facilities. The mean annual rainfall is 450 mm.

Calculation of rainwater:

9.00 x 6.50 x 450 x 0.9 = 23895 litres

The height from the ground to the gutter outlet is 3.00 m. According to Table 5, a
reservoir of 4.0 m diameter on a filling height of 1.80 m has a storage capacity of 23
000 litres. This means that one reservoir built' et one gable side of the house would
be sufficient for nearly all the rainwater which can be collected if an average rainfall
occurs. Two gutters along the sides of the building should be connected with
downpipes fixed to the gable wall and then bridged into the tank

For this storage capacity a ferro-cement tank would be more economically efficient
than the reinforced bricktank and serves the same purpose. But if a smaller storage
capacity would be sufficient, or if funds are very limited, two corrugated iron tanks,
each of 9 000 litres, would be cheaper. These two tanks could be located at each of
the gable sides, collecting from each gutter, or next to each other on slightly different
levels, draining 'the overflow from the ' tank connected to the pipes into the second
tank. Fig. shows this as an example with two corrugated iron tanks, but the same
method is certainly possible with any other type of reservoir.

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