Rain harvesting: Making each drop count at his home

62-year-old Ramit Budhiraja, who lives in Defence Colony, focuses on two areas -- to ensure water recyclability, and heat mitigation.

For Defence Colony resident Ramit Budhraja, water scarcity was on his mind when he began designing his new home in 2017 and after searching for the best sustainable living practices online, he presented a list to his architect to incorporate.

Defence Colony resident Ramit Budhiraja.

The 62-year-old, who has now retired but still takes up the consultancy roles occasionally, says his focus was on two areas -- to ensure water recyclability, and heat mitigation. Now, his four-storey house saves an average of 200,000 litres of water each year by simply using rainwater harvesting tanks and by recycling grey water.

“Rainwater harvesting is something that is mandated in homes now, but we wanted to utilise it to its full potential and so we went ahead and installed a large rainwater harvesting tank that can hold 30,000 litres of water,” he says, stating that the water is chlorinated if required to ensure the water quality is not impacted.

Budhraja says he also decided to use grey water – the relatively clean waste water coming out of sinks, baths and kitchen – to feed the flushing tanks.

The house also has a swimming pool which too uses the same recycled water after treating it.