[Jugaad #3] Rainwater Harvesting for Commerical Purpose

Product Description Using rainwater to service cars

Inventor Mandovi Motors

Source Credits www.indiatogether.org

Estimated Cost Not clear

Problem Domain Environment/Ecology

Description

Mandovi motors of Karnataka has come up with an innovative idea to meet its huge demand of water for servicing cars. The idea is based upon the basic observation that the roof of the workshop covered a huge area and thus could collect a substantial amount of rainfall. Quoting from the source article

It covers an area of 360 square metres. Calculating at the rate of 3500 mm average rainfall of this district - Dakshina Kannada – the roof catches 12, 60,000 litres of water.

Since the available rainwater was abundant, they had to dig out a large infiltration pit around the casing pipe of the borewell - 15 feet length, 12 feet breadth and 5 feet depth. Using boulders, granite stone pieces and sand - all filtering materials - the pit was refilled. Later it was covered with a strong iron lid so as to permit vehicles to run over it.

This scheme of using the rainwater to recharge the borewell has helped Mandovi to get rid of their water shortage. This has also benefitted Mandovi motors in other ways. Apart from saving them money in buying tanker water during shortage, they have also got rid of the problem of patchy windows. Patchy windows are caused due to dissolved salts in borewell water which show up on the car windows once the water has dried up. As rainwater is the purest form of water, this problem was automatically taken care.