India, has failed to implement water harvesting structure at household level and even at all levels. I wish to know any other countries successfully implemented water harvesting structure and how they made it real.
Many New Zealand rural houses and houses in large sections (referred to as lifestyle blocks) are not connected with centralised water supply network. If households can access to groundwater, many such houses drill water bores to draw water for domestic needs. However, in many cases inaccessibility or costly access to groundwater has inspired many households to resort to rainwater harvest.
Typically, in households where rainwater is used as a source of domestic water, large storage tanks (10-20 m3), often made of synthetic and non-concrete materials, are either installed above or under ground. Most roof water is redirected to such tanks. In such cases households use water frugally and carefully. In majority of the cases households could manage with the rain water for the whole year. However, in case of extended drought periods they have to purchase water from tank water distributors.
These days even in reticulated water supply areas it is becoming a common practice for many urban authorities to require urban houses to install such tanks at a smaller scale to collect roof rainwater for garden irrigation purpose to reduce burden on the dwindling urban water supplies. I have seen such urban tanks (in battery of 1m3 individual cylinders) in Melbourne, Australia and some parts of New Zealand.
I live in Victoria, Australia at the moment. We can find rainwater tanks easily in each houses. They are used for watering garden or connected to the house (e.g. for flushing). Due to limited water resources and drought experience, especially in Victoria, each water source, including stormwater is really valuable.
Kindly refer to books posted on www.searnet.org website especially impacts of rainwater harvesting in Kusa for a comprehensive coverage
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