Author(s)

Tulinave Burton Mwamila^1*, Zacharia Katambara², Moo Young Han³

¹Department of Rural Water Supply, Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
²Department of Built Environment Engineering, Mbeya University of Science and Technology, Mbeya, Tanzania.
³Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.

There are significant household water supply challenges including quantity sufficiency and quality, which have economic and social implications. The challenges have remained despite the efforts of government establishing centralized or groundwater systems, and/or having individual crude systems. A Tanzanian rural household case study was considered by assessing the performance of a currently relied surface runoff collecting pond system for domestic purposes. A daily water balance model was applied with performance parameters, no water days (NWD) and rainwater usage (RUR). Rooftop runoff harvesting system was proposed as a water supply source in addition to the current one. Under such dual supply conditions, users can meet the drinking and non-drinking demand even in dry seasons at a minimum of 2 and 20 L/person/d, respectively. For rainwater harvesting adoption (considering selected regions), it was further established that amount and variation in rainfall impacts on quantity available for meeting demand. Increased catchment implies increased harvestable quantity, and with same storage higher reduction of number of NWD although with slight decrease of RUR. Also, increased storage is required for achieving higher RUR in case the same demand is maintained. But same storage can be maintained for increased demand relative to catchment size. However, rainwater catchment increase has greater impact on meeting a specified demand under given condition of rainfall quantity and variation. The RWH technology strategies presented in this study are replicable in other developing countries under site specific conditions.

Dual Water Supply, Household Water Supply, Rainwater Harvesting Strategies, Rainwater Harvesting Technology, Tanzania

Mwamila, T. , Katambara, Z. and Han, M. (2016) Strategies for Household Water Supply Improvement with Rainwater Harvesting. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 4, 146-158. doi: 10.4236/gep.2016.49011.