Eco-friendly Rainwater Harvesting Ponds

SILVERON’s unique design for rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge

Land surfaces are uneven. After a rain shower, rainwater can often be observed to flow from higher ground to low-lying areas. As rainwater flows, it collects suspended silt and salts from the soil and accumulates at low points – as puddles, ponds, lakes, streams or even around urban infrastructure such as roads, housing societies and underpasses.

These pools of rainwater are a common sight during the monsoons. They spread over a large area making evaporation easy and quick. This evaporation leaves behind the silt and salts to quickly deposit on the ground in that area.

As this cycle repeats, monsoon after monsoon, gradually the low land becomes hard and non-permeable leading to 100% loss of collected rainwater by way of evaporation.

To help conserve rainwater, we at SILVERON decided to identify such natural locations where water collects and also map the flow path of rainwater coming into these locations.

Thereafter, we worked on remodeling the landscape such that the area available for water to spread and lost due to evaporation is reduced. We enhanced the water holding capacity of the selected spot by excavation.

From our experience and insight, we know that merely building a pond to collect rainwater is not sufficient for rainwater harvesting. This is because the surface of the freshly dug pond would allow percolation of water for one or two monsoons and saturate after that, becoming hard and impermeable.

To continue using these ponds year after year for rainwater harvesting and for helping improve soil-moisture & groundwater levels, we installed SILVERON recharge shafts within this pond. This ensures that the water isn’t merely collected but also finds an artificial pathway to enrich the underground aquifer.

We recognized that rainwater flowing freely through fields and farms over large distances tends to gather considerable quantities of silt that is the finest particles of soil that get suspended in rainwater. This silt eventually starts filling up the ponds each year.

Silt accumulation is an unavoidable, natural phenomenon that can over the years cause rainwater harvesting systems to degrade in performance. SILVERON designed a novel system for silt-removal that sits in the flow-path of the water just before it enters the pond. The flowing water is channeled through a silt removal tank and enters the pond only through the windows in its walls.

In this unique design, even if the silt removal tank fills to the brim, it would not hamper the flow of water into the main pond through its windows placed at a slightly lower level. Once inside the pond, water flows down over a stone pitched slope. This helps reduce its velocity and increases the deposition of any remaining silt as the base of the slope.

Thereafter the water fills the pond and gets absorbed into the recharge shafts by the holes on the side of the shaft.

The unique highlight of this SILVERON Rainwater Harvesting system design is that it does not confront nature or go against natural principles at any stage. This system stands as testament to SILVERON’s core design philosophy that is to support natural processes and work with nature to recharge groundwater. Ingenious designs for durable Rainwater Harvesting and Groundwater Recharge systems are a hallmark of SILVERON’s success.

SILVERON’s site-specific designs of Rainwater Harvesting systems recharge the groundwater aquifers and simultaneously enrich the root zone with moisture supporting trees, shrubs and foliage to grow.

Increased moisture content in the topsoil and vegetation raises the humidity in the air that in turn helps in the survival of diverse interdependent friendly organisms like bacteria and earthworm etc living both over and below the soil surface.

The vegetation generated by this enriched root zone forms a network of roots helping check soil erosion and improve plant and animal life.

This SILVERON project demonstrates the significance of developing ponds in the low lying area with recharge shafts in appropriate numbers to allow rain water to flow into the pond during rains and enrich the groundwater levels.