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Frequently Asked Questions
About Rainwater Harvesting
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Frequently Asked Questions

What is rainwater harvesting?

This means catching and storing rain where it falls and using it. The rainwater can be stored in tanks or used to recharge groundwater.

Does it work?

Yes. Rainwater can be used for domestic needs, farming and also commercial purposes.

Can I harvest rain in my own house?

Yes, everyone can harvest rain. With simple structures, open spaces like rooftops and a little help, one can have a system of harvesting rain. See RWH technologies

Who will it benefit?

You benefit since you’ll always have water. Your groundwater will be recharged and as groundwater moves, your neighbourhood will gain too. This is an incentive to get all your neighbours to join and harvest rain as well. 

Who will build it and how long will it take?

Building a structure for rainwater harvesting is simple. However, you’ll need someone who understands and has experience in the principles of rainwater harvesting. With such a person, it should take no more than two weeks

What will be the quality of water?

The cleanest rainwater is the one harvested from the rooftops. Rainwater collected into the ground cannot be easily cleaned once contaminated. Therefore do not let water with sewage or other dirt flow into your recharge pits. Always have filters to keep some dirt out.

Does it require a lot of maintenance?

For your rainwater harvesting system to serve you well, it will require maintenance at least once or twice a year, at very little cost. The benefits far outweigh the effort put forth. Rainwater is about catching water before it slips! 

How do I use the Knowledge Base?

On the SearNet home page, you can access the “Knowledge Base” link from the “Resources” menu on the top menu bar. Alternatively, you can also click on “Knowledge Base” on the left navigation table 

§ In the overview, documents are organized by categories. The same record may be found under more than one category, as several may be assigned.

§ From the initial view, categories are organized hierarchically. When you click on a category, its contents (records) will be displayed along with any sub-categories.

§ Each record is displayed with a title, indicating its contents.  Click on any record to display it in full. 

Searching

At any location in the Knowledge Base, you can access the search function.  The search field will appear above the record list in all category views, however not from the initial category tree when you first enter the Knowledge Base.

To conduct a search, just enter the keywords that you are searching for, and press “Search”.  The Knowledge Base will shortly return a list of all records that contain your search words.

 

Note: If your search does not return the documents you are looking for, try searching with different keywords.

To show all the documents contained in the Knowledge Base, click on the “Show all” link.  Currently, the number of records is limited, but as the base grows, this may give a very large number of documents.

Creating records

New records can be created form any location in the categories view.

Below the Search function, click on the link saying “New record”.

In the next screen, fill in all the fields as accurately as possible:

§ Give the record a title that gives readers an idea of the general content. 
§ In “Document Summary”, enter a brief abstract that sums up the contents of the documents in the record. 

Keywords

Entering the right keywords with a new record is crucial for future search and retrieval.  When the search engine of the Knowledge Base conducts a search, it uses the keywords field. If one or more of the keywords of a record matches the search words, then that record will appear on the results list.

When choosing keywords in a new record, you should include all technical terms that are relevant to its contents.  There is no limit to how many keywords you can enter – just keep in mind that they should be relevant.

When entering keywords, separate them with “;”. Avoid using any other punctuation or spaces.

Example:

If a record is about roof catchment in Khwisero constituency in Western Kenya, enter the keywords “roof; catchment; Khwisero; Kenya”.

Uploading files

Once you are done with the fields of the first screen, press “Post Document”.  In the next screen, browse to select the file that you want to upload, and select the file type from the pull-down menu.  Repeat this procedure for each file you want to upload.

What to post

Any document on a subject related to rainwater harvesting can be posted to the Knowledge Base.

Not only technical documents are relevant, but any research report, case study or similar should be considered relevant.  Material relevant to the promotion of such technologies should also be considered relevant.

§ Under Categories, pick all the categories that apply for your document.  Try to limit the number of categories to a minimum.

How do I submit an article?

On the SearNet home page, you can access the “Submit Article” link from the “Resources” menu on the top menu bar. Alternatively, you can also click on “Submit an Article” on the left navigation table.

The screen as shown below will appear:

§  In the “News Title” field, write a caption for the article.  This title will appear on the web site front page in the link to your article, once published.

§  In the “News Writer” field, your name should appear.  If someone else is submitting through your account, the name should be changed to reflect that.

§  In the “News Body” field, paste in the article itself. 

§  If you want to include a picture with the article, you can do this in the “Image File” field. First click on “Choose”. A pop-up file list will appear. Pick the image file that you want to include, and click on “Open”. Some important points about including images are discussed in the Pictures section of this chapter.

§  If you have chosen to include an image file, you can give the image a title in the “Image Caption” field.  The caption that you enter will appear in italics below the image in the article view.

§  In the “Country” section, your country should appear. 

When you’re done, click on “Submit article”.  You may have to wait a while before submission is complete. If the submission in successful, you will be forwarded to a screen called “My Posted Articles”, where you will see an overview of articles that you have previously submitted.

As soon as your article is approved by the SearNet secretariat, it will appear on the web site.

A web article will be stored in the database as pure text.  Formatting will automatically be applied through the web scripts each time the text is loaded from the database, that is, every time a web user opens the article.

Important:  Do not attempt to submit text as pre-formatted HTML.  This will affect the way the text is displayed.

What to submit

A good article, be it for the web site or for the magazine, should be a success story about your organization.

Whether it is a major achievement, such as the success of a project, a conference or coverage in the media, then that may potentially be a story that attracts the interest of other network members. Case studies or research reports on rainwater harvesting are also highly interesting.

The very idea behind an article should be to promote your organization within the SearNet forum, in a constructive way, motivating others to follow your example.  If you catch the attention of SearNet member organizations in other countries, your article has served its purpose.  If your article becomes the subject of several discussions on the SearNet web site discussion forum, then you may consider it a success!

Pictures

As bandwidth is an issue, pictures intended for publishing in web articles should be kept as small as possible.  To keep the file size down, .JPG format should always be chosen.  As a general rule, the picture size should also be kept below 300*300 pixels, with a file size of approximately 20 KB.

What affects bandwidth however, is the file size.  The submission page for web articles does not allow users to upload picture files larger than 50 KB, so this limit must be respected in all cases.