Handbook of Water Harvesting and Conservation

25Comparing Rainwater Storage Options

Sara Nazif¹, Hamed Tavakolifar¹, Hossein Abbasizadeh², and Saeid Eslamian³

¹School of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

²Department of Water Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

³Department of Water Engineering, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran

25.1 Introduction

Water conservation usually conveys negative feelings to people, as it is thought to use less water through rationing. However, water conservation is not just about cutting water consumption, but it is about proper management of water supply and implementation of water-saving technologies, such as rainwater harvesting facilities (Jabali et al. 2017). Rainwater harvesting is considered as collecting surface run-off from a structure or other impervious surface and storing it for future uses like irrigation and toilet flushing (Rahman et al. 2017). Also, the stored water can be utilized for other different objectives namely gardening, domestic, aquifer recharge, and others. There are many well-known names widely used to describe collection of rainwater such as rainwater collection, rainwater harvesting, and rainwater catchment. Various expressions are used in different countries; for instance, roof water collection or rooftop water collection are common names in some countries (Innovative Water Solutions LLC 2018). Traditionally, rainwater harvesting refers to ...