Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
"Water and Tomorrow" episode: natural water tank on air: 12nd January 2000
"ads."
-subtitle coming later-
There is a house with no fear of inundation
At first glace, this house may looked very common
Look closely enough you will see unusual details
Large rain water gutters are found at every edge of the roof.
The rain water pipes run down to many water tanks around the house
Small concrete dikes form a small stream across the house area.
A dug well looks like a rural water pit.
This pit is connected to all the roof tanks to receive the run-offs.
All the large and small tanks discharge further into this pit.
These connections prevent the house premise from inundation.
Moreover, this house may be the only one on the Sukumwit Road that is not disturbed by a city water cut-off even for a few days.
This house will not feel the shortage of water supply.
This house will not feel the shortage of water supply.
I have been storing all the waters from my house underground. because the underground can naturally absorb lots of water
We had been constructing the city on the vast stretch of land and pave it all over.
We changed the earth surface into stone pavements.
However, it is still the natural earth underneath that I can use to store my waters.
I turned around to nature.
Just dig an ordinary water well 2 to 3 meters into the ground with a few cement ring reinforcement.
Fill it all around out-side to let the water seep through.
This well has a purpose to let water into the earth in the rainy seasons.
The in-flows also include surface.run-offs that gets in-side through an opening.
The in-flows also include surface.run-offs that gets in-side through an opening.
Nearly all the water in my house get into this well.
The water tanks help slow down the flow rates that get into this well
This well is not very deep but it always contains some water after 4 to 5 months of use.
I might have used twenty or thirty thousand liters from it.
When I pumped water out more water from the surroundings will seep in.
I use the water for flower watering directly.
Some of the water will be filtered to make it clearer.
I use the clear water for my flush toilets.
The blue pump brings the water into to the filter tank.
The filter tank contains 40 cm deep layer of sand that support a layer of biomass on top.
This biological. The layer is technically called "Schmutzdecke"
or dirty blanket in the German language.
It is a hundred year old technology that has been used to produce drinking water in old water works.
Many rural water supply system use it.
These basic facilities cost a few thousand Baht but yields many times ten thousand liters of water.
This benefit is perhaps just a byproduct.
More seriously is the need for the city to return the rain water to the earth. It is more worthy to do so than trying to save the water bill.
More important than drainage, is to return the rain water to the earth of Bangkok.
Reviving the natural conditions of the earth is important to many more environmental aspects.
A water saturated soil is more stable than a dry soil.
Bangkok has been subsiding because we pumped out the ground water.
When the ground water level sinks the land level also sinks.
I believe the land subsidence will stop if we can keep the ground water level as it is.
The rain water in the soil will push against the salty water from the sea.
Other provinces at the sea-side will all have the same problem.
Without the soil water, the sea water will sweep in and make it salty.
If we only care about the present situation we may not see the danger of the surface drainage gutters that send these waters to the sea.
We may not see why we should take care not to combine the clear rain water with the Bangkok sewage.
It is perhaps laughable to see someone trying to save this water.
But truthfully he is working on the counter balance of the changes back to nature.
Look at problems close to ourselves like the story at this house.
We can see an example to deal with a problem in a simple way that is useful with just a small investment.
We can compare this with the wide spread land-filling to get away from flood.
In fact we don't know for sure what is the land-fill height, that can really bring a "peace of mind" to the people of Bangkok.