It's said, save water save life, and looking at the current rate of groundwater depletion, it has become essential to conserve water, and allow minimum wastage of this precious resource. One can do one’s bit for saving water by maintaining good practices like pouring half a glass of water at a time so that it isn’t wasted or reusing water from washing vegetables for cleaning the floors and watering the plants. Designing your home with the right features with the help of professional interior designers can also help in water conservation. You can specify your requirements and let the professionals implement the changes. In this ideabook, to help you get started with your water conservation mission, we share some simple design tips and tricks to save water in your home.
Have you noticed how much water gets wasted from the RO filters that are installed in the kitchen? While people with a social conscience collect the wastewater in a container and reuse it for cleaning, it is a great idea to build this provision into the design of the kitchen. To do this, one only needs to extend the filter pipe, concealing it in the wall to take it down through the counter slab, where the water can be stored in a large container. You can use a water pump to bring that water back up into a faucet at the sink and use it for washing the utensils. You could also use the water for the plants or to clean the house.
A lot of thought should go into saving water, and one idea is to install aerating faucets. These are unique faucets designed with low flow and allow air to mix with the water to create a pressure that makes cleaning easier without using too much water. It is a win-win situation. The aerating faucets can easily be installed in the kitchen sinks and the bathroom sinks. These faucets do require periodic cleaning and maintenance, but the amount of water they save makes them entirely worth the effort.
If you love gardens and wish to have a green area on your terrace or balcony, a great design tip to conserve water in your home is to plant a vertical garden. You can install a vertical garden on any wall and arrange your pots so that they are one above the other. By doing so, the pot at the bottom will get water from the overflow or the excess water from the pot above it. You would also need to arrange the plants that require more water on the top and the more drought-tolerant plants in the bottom layer so that you only need to water one layer, and the rest will be managed by the water dripping from the top to the bottom rows of planters. Another idea is to install drip irrigation with an automatic timer so that there is no wastage while watering plants.
If you have open areas in your house like a terrace or a balcony, you can make the most of it for water conservation by harvesting the rainwater. You should design your open spaces with a slight slope toward an edge, and fit a narrow drain outlet that helps to direct and collect the water. Even the roofs can be designed for this purpose to collect the rainwater through a pipe and direct it into an underground tank or large containers depending on the available space.
As a design concept, this is self-explanatory, as a big flush tank will use more water than a small one for every flush. Using smaller toilet bowls and sinks will eventually save a significant amount of water since one will require to use less of it for cleaning and maintenance. Additionally, in most modern bathrooms, flush tank fixtures come with the option of a half or full flush, which helps to conserve water.
In certain parts of India, where air conditioners are a necessity, it is a great idea to save the water coming out from the exterior unit of the ACs and reuse it. If you are building your own house, you can design the pipes to redirect all the water from the air conditioners into an underground tank, from where it can be pumped to the overhead tank and reused.
Most often, water is taken for granted in Indian homes, and its conservation is not given due priority, as it is not an expensive resource in the country. However, with the rate of water depletion throughout the world, it won’t be too far in the future that water becomes a rare and expensive resource one can’t afford to waste, so it’s advisable to plan for the future and design measures to conserve water and minimise its use in your house.
