Summer sans water woes

Sangeeta Banerjee

Summer has just kicked in. One of the key challenges during summers in apartment complexes, packed with modern amenities, is to meet the water demands for keeping all the amenities working. 

Typically, it's seen that apartment residents consume anything between 140 to 250 litres of water per day! During rest of the year, most apartment complexes can meet their water requirements through municipality water supply or bore well water. In summer, however, dependency on external sources like water tankers go up, which puts a lot of financial strain on apartment residents and management committee members. 

During peak summer a water tanker cost may vary from Rs 500 to Rs 1,500, amounting to a monthly expenditure of a few lakhs depending on the size of the apartment complex. Also the quality of water provided through tankers is not good.

Apartment Communities are like mini cities which face same problems which are faced by cities in a larger scale, water, security, power, waste management. Many an innovative solution has come from apartment communities where natural leaders come up trying to solve issues like water scarcity for their home. 

This summer, here are a few things that you as apartment residents can do differently to reduce your expenditure and also lessen the strain put on our natural resources. We have seen these solutions work and reap benefits for apartment complexes across India.

Form a dedicated subcommittee that will get all the below done in a focused manner, and you should be having more manageable water supply this summer.

Install water spray or water flow reducers

A water spray is no sophisticated appliance. It is simply that kitchen tap showerhead that gives a wider flow of water making washing of dishes possible with much less water.

Have the plumber install this mandatorily in all the kitchen taps. He can do it while he visits to check for leaky taps. Water flow reducers also help a lot. Sigma One Housing Society, Pune that installed water flow reducers reduced overall water consumption by around 40 per cent.

Watch the water tanker entries

During summer almost every apartment complex ends up ordering private tankers when the city water supply plus the borewells are not sufficient. This is one of the biggest variable expenses for apartment complexes. Often there is pilferage with respect to water tankers. In a day when you order 7 water tankers, there may be an entry in the register of 7 water tankers, whereas actually only four have come. A security gate management software that records the entry, exit details of the water tanker also makes the information instantly visible to the apartment residents. Such SaaS based solutions can bring in a lot of transparency and save a lot of money for apartment complexes.

Fix the leaks

In any apartment complex 30-70 per cent of the flats will have some leakage or the other, depending on the age of the fittings. 

Even a minor leak, like 20 drops per minute adds up to waste around 180 litres of water per month. So a 200 unit apartment complex is losing 36,000 litres of water per month.

There can be leakages in pumps, borewells, tanks, which should be checked once before the summer sets in.  Make sure the borewells are metered and monitored regularly. In case there are serious leaks or seepages in the tanks/sumps then do take immediate steps to repair or water proof them.

Involve everyone

The domestic staff are great ambassadors for awareness. If they show responsibility with water usage in each home they work in, residents feel embarrassed if they are not responsible too. Hold sessions for the maids, car cleaners to understand the need to save water. Show them impactful videos followed by what they can do to use minimal water.

Make sure that the facility manager is aware of the various practices to follow water conservation while maintaining your facilities like swimming pool, fire-fighting systems, etc. 

And above all, let the actual numbers speak. Every month publish the water expense report from your expense tracker to all residents. Let them be conscious if the bills are rising and rejoice if the bills are coming down!

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Get started on initiatives that can fetch returns to complexes for many summers to come

a) Rainwater harvesting

Rainwater collected from the roofs of houses or from specially prepared areas of ground, can make an important contribution to drinking water. 

Apartment complexes who has implemented RWH has reported that from ½ hour to 45 mins rain, water worth 3-4 tankers of water can be saved. In around 3 years apartment complexes typically break even after doing such RWH installations.

b) Water metering

Setting water meters for individual homes is the most important tool to tell people this is a scarce resource.These meters provide metrics to monitor water usage of each apartment and accordingly they are charged. Apartment complexes report around 20 per cent reduction in water consumption after implementing water metering. 

c) Water recycling

Many apartment complexes today use recycled water for landscaping, toilet flush tanks, etc. These initiatives help bring down water related costs radically. There are also few extremely forward thinking apartment complexes like TZED Homes, Bangalore, that use recycled sewage water for all their water requirements, even for drinking. They have become independent with their water requirements, using special treatment plants which produce water which purer than what's provided by water tankers and municipality. 

—The writer is Co-founder &CEO, Apartment ADDA