Biome Trust designed and installed a rooftop rainwater harvesting system at Govt Telugu School, Ulsoor, and also conducted sessions on water literacy for the students and teachers. Funding support was from Brady India.

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RAINWATER HARVESTING AT GOVERNMENT TELUGU SCHOOL, ULSOOR
Overview of the school
Location: https://goo.gl/maps/Ht9BBmFYE3s
Management Department of Education, GoK
Type Co-educational
Medium of instruction Telugu
Residential No
Teachers + non-teaching staff 6
Classes 1st-7th
Classrooms 2 blocks
Playground Present
Anganwadi No
Meals Meals provided by ISKCON
Existing RWH system A defunct tank exists but without connections

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Headmistress Lakshmi Devi (9844736224)
Contact person: Mr Keshava (9986825214)
Students 70
Toilets 2 for girls, 3 for boys
Borewell One borewell exists in the campus but due to
broken pipe the water is not pumped and used
Existing water storage Sump of ~2000 L, 2 OHTs of 500 L and 1 OHT of
200 L (Total 3200 L)
School Development Management
Committee (SDMC)
Present. 24 members. Meeting held once a month
Background of the students The children coming to the school are from places
like KR Puram, Nagawara, Banaswadi
Overview of the existing infrastructure and water supply
The existing water supply to the school is from BWSSB i.e. Cauvery water supply. The water
is supplied once every 3 days. It is stored in an underground sump of ~2000 L and then
pumped to the overhead tanks (OHTs) of capacities 500 L (2 OHTs) and 200 L (1 OHT).
From the OHTs the plumbing connections have been given to the handwash station,

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drinking water filter and toilets. However, the connections to the toilets are broken. The
school also has one borewell inside the campus but it is not used due to broken pipe and
leakage issues.
There are separate toilets for boys and girls. 2 blocks are for girls and 3 blocks for boys.
The current water demand as estimated by the school is 1000 litres per day (LPD).
However, considering 70 children in the school and 45 litres per person per day (LPCD) as
the water requirement recommended by the Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS-1993), the
school would require ~3150 LPD including water for gardening. Furthermore, the
classification of demand based on end use is not available.
As part of the Government of Karnataka’s Suvarnajala scheme, rainwater harvesting (RWH)
tanks were constructed in several government schools across Karnataka. This is one such
school where the RWH tank exists but is not being used. The unused tank’s capacity would
be ~3000 to 4000 L.
Unused RWH tank OHTs
Sound rooftop Leaky rooftop

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Existing water supply infrastructure and design
Not-to-scale representation of the campus
Water issues observed
● Part of the roof is leaking
● The water quality is suspect
● Plumbing connections to the toilet are broken. Water has to be carried to the toilets by
buckets
● The existing drinking water filter seems not to be working. Teachers ask students to
bring drinking water from home
● Limited space to do new storage

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Rainwater harvesting potential
Roof area Runoff
coefficient
Annual runoff at
930 mm (KL)
Runoff at 10 mm
rainfall (KL)
Runoff at 30 mm
rainfall (KL)
116.31 0.9 97.36 1.0 3.14
The school can harvest around 3000 litres from an average rain of 30 mm, and around
97000 litres annually.
Proposed strategy for rainwater harvesting
● The sound part of the rooftop will be considered for RWH
● The downtake pipes will be directed towards existing but unused rainwater harvesting
tank
● Prior to collection and storage, the rainwater will be filtered through a first rain
separator (FRS) and gravel filter
● The defunct RWH tank will be revived
● Taps will be provided on the revived tank
● The water from the tank will be used for hand wash, plate washing, etc
● School has requested Biome to level the area around the handwash station and pave it
● Recharge well of 3ft diameter and 25 ft depth proposed next to the existing borewell to
recharge it indirectly
● The rooftop area with leakage issues that has not been considered for storage of
rainwater will be used for connecting to the recharge well
Recharge well plan

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Strategy for rainwater harvesting

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Pics of the work done
The work of installing the rooftop RWH system and digging of the recharge well was taken
up in Sept - Oct 2019, with funding support from Brady Company India Pvt Ltd.
Biome also conducted three sessions on water literacy with the students of the school. The
first session was on the water cycle and the water demand of the school, the second session
was on rainwater harvesting, and the third session was on water quality testing.