10th International Rainwater Catchment Systems Conference
"Rainwater International 2001"
Mannheim, Germany - September 2001

Section 1: Rainwater Harvesting in an Urban Context

Paper 1.7

Sizing of Rainwater Storage Tanks in Urban Zones

M. A. Domínguez, Nikolai Serpokrylov
Faculty of Engineering
University of Queretaro
Queretaro,
Mexico
email: migueld@sunserver.uaq.mx

C. Eric Schiller
Faculty of Engineering
University of Ottawa
Ottawa
Canada

Rainwater harvesting systems have been used for centuries. In many developing countries, their use is essential because of the scarcity of water resources. In spite of the fact that most of this technology is focused mainly on rural zones, their use in urban zones is not only convenient but necessary, mainly in those regions where the conventional sources of supply are scarce, distant or exploited. In the urban areas, the use of large-scale roof rainwater harvesting offers a high potential for alleviating water constraints to the domestic demand; also, they can be cost effective. The objective of this work is to show, on one hand, that significant volumes from a rainwater harvesting system could be obtained if we use the roofs of large buildings in urban centers; on the other hand, a technical-economic analysis is done to evaluate the size of the rainwater storage. Under this approach, the temporal variability of the rainfall is considered by modeling the mass balance equation for the storage tank. The approach maximizes the water input and minimizes the construction costs of the cistern. This method is illustrated for an urban zone of the City of Queretaro, Mexico.

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