How Our Apartment In Chennai Survived The Acute Water Crisis

 Note : These are just from our experiences and an awareness post which might help many individual houses or apartments to use their water wisely and reduce manual effort. By following these we were able to reduce our electricity bills by 50%. We are not promoting any brands here. More technical details, product information and cost details can be acquired through the search engines.

 In the recent days our social media is getting flooded with messages on how to effectively save water or consume minimal water for different chores and how to store rain water.  Here’s what we did in our apartment in Vandalur and we have been surviving during this critical period without depending on the water tankers.

Our Experience

The summer of 2014 was like a nightmare for us. Ours is a 3 block apartment, with individual borewells and overhead tanks. The block in which we own a flat had a very poor yield, but the other two blocks had surplus. Back then we did not have a security guard. So, running the motor was taken care by just ourselves. Unfortunately, in our block the family who had been taking care of the motor had shifted to a new place and there started the problem. Initially we didn’t know that we should not run the motor for a long time. Whenever we don’t get water any flat member would just go down and turn on the motor and it would run for an hour or two continuously, ending up dry running and with high electricity charges as well. One fine day our motor coil got damaged and only then we came to know from the plumber that a motor can run only for 30-45 minutes at a stretch.

Hence I took up the responsibility of taking care of the motor timings. Never knew it would be such a difficult task. Our yield was so very little that our motor could pump only for 15 minutes. Then I had to leave a gap of 45 minutes and then turn on the motor. By the time I turn off and go back home, some resident would have turned it on as the water had already stopped. Inspite of explaining them that dry running a motor will give us more troubles, it’s the human tendency to expect the machine to work irrespective of whatever the scenario is.

There were days when I had been climbing up and down more than 20 times a day along with my little one and even to the terrace to check the water level in the overhead tank.  Sometimes I used to take care of this motor activity during nights, when there is minimal usage, so that we have some safe water levels for the next day. But nothing helped us. And this task was already testing my patience.

All that we could understand was we have a very minimal yield and had to plan wisely so that we get water without any interruption. We were badly in need of a PERMANENT solution and that’s when the talk about the Automatic Controllers came in through a known friend of my hubby. We already had a little knowledge about controllers as my dad has the set up for our individual house in my native. But for an apartment setup, we had to do dig in for more details and understand it end to end from the vendor. Since it was very new to us, we first thought of installing the controller for just one block and go with it gradually. When we got it installed it was like a whole lot of relief for us. From then on, there wasn’t any manual effort to turn on and off the motor. And our pockets were saved as the electricity bill was also reduced. So, we installed automatic controllers for the remaining two blocks as well.

So, here comes the detailed info:

A float will be installed in the overhead tank, which monitors the minimum level (tank doesn’t go empty) and maximum level (water doesn’t overflow).

Next is the controller, in which two timers are set. First is the motor running time, that is, for how long a motor should run. Say for example, if it is set to 30 minutes, the motor will automatically be turned off in 30 minutes. Second is the time interval, that is once the motor turns off, after how many hours or minutes, should it be turned on again. Consider it to be set as 60 minutes.

When will the motor be turned on?

Motor will be turned on under two scenarios. Either when the water level reaches the minimum level or after 60 minutes (whatever is set as time interval) from when the motor was last turned off.

When will the motor be turned off?

When the water level reaches the maximum level or when the running time reaches 30 minutes or when there is a dry run(when the motor doesn’t pump any water) or when the motor is overloaded.

 These are the Benefits

• No dry running/overload (saves your motor coil, electricity bill)
• No overflowing (saves water and electricity bill again)
• No scenarios of tank getting emptied unless other wise the controller itself turns faulty. Which means we have water supply at all times.
• Most importantly reduced manual effort, which means we don’t forget to turn on/off the motor on time
• Optimal usage of motor, saves motor life

Now that all the manual efforts were reduced for all blocks, we noticed a considerable reduction in the units consumed.  Since naturally we had yield problem with our block, unit consumption was higher than the other two blocks. Which means the motor had to run a little longer than the other two blocks. After all, we were just one single apartment as a whole. So, we thought why not share the resources across blocks. Many brainstorming sessions happened with numerous plumbers to understand how to overcome the scenario. And then we came up with the idea if interlinking the overhead tanks.

Concept:

A connection was established across all the three overhead tanks’ outlet line. (interlined the 3 tanks). So, at any point of time a motor pumps water to a tank, this water will be shared across with the other two tanks.

Where this helped?

• Since our block had a minimal yield, water sharing from the other two blocks saved our block motors’ unit consumption.
• If any motor of a particular block doesn’t work for some reason, residents don’t have to worry. Other two motors will pump their water and the water will be eventually shared through the connected lines. (recently happened and none of the residents suffered without water)

Any new initiative would have its own set of challenges. In our case, not everyone was convinced with the interlinking as it was new to everyone. But we kept insisting and convinced them as the benefits were going to be for the entire apartment in a longer run. Again, most importantly it is our duty to save the natural resources in all possible ways and we have to do our part. Isn’t it?