Water Sources and Requirements:
Water is a chemical compound of hydrogen and oxygen and can exist in solid, liquid and gaseous form. It is necessary for life existence, next only to oxygen in sequence of importance. One could live without food for a couple of months but cannot survive even for a few days without water. Astronomers and scientists, within their quest for extra terrestrial life, find for traces of water on any planet for the possibility of organic life to exist there.
For normal human needs, water is used for a variety of purposes, e.g. washing, drinking, and other domestic uses, agriculture, community and industrial uses. For meeting these needs, a well planned and executed water supply scheme is required to be designed concentrating on sources of supply, estimation of requirement, testing and managing the quality and storage capacity and the distribution network.
In this unit, the basic concepts of water supply scheme planning, sources of supply and requirement estimation are described.
Objectives
After studying this unit, you should be able to
- understand basic concepts of water supply scheme,
- assess and estimate the quantity of water needed for different types of uses,
- study and list various available sources of water,
- know factors which can affect the demand for water, and
- decide the selection criteria of water source selection for different uses, e.g. domestic, commercial or industrial.