1st International Conference on Rain Water Cistern Systems
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA - June 1982

Section 6: Related Topics

Page 387

Rain Water Cistern Systems in Indonesia

Srimoerni Doelhomid
Universtiy of Indonesia

Introduction

In Indonesia, villagers obtain their domestic water from springs, shallow wells, rivers or lakes. The fast coastal. areas have brackish surface water, groundwater and intermittent rivers. In such areas, rain water is collected from roofs for domestic purposes.

From about three to four years ago, the Indonesian government has constructed, with some financial aid from UNICEF, nearly a thousand rain water cistern (RWC) systems in Gunung Kidul, Madura, Lombok and Nusa Tenggara. A program has been established to train groups of villagers to build bamboo cement cisterns and to construct roof gutters and other component structures. Unfortunately, the storage capacity of the cisterns is not large enough to provide enough water for the very long, dry season demands. H.R. Doelhomid, a University of Indonesia student, conducted a study in which she presented nomograms for the volume of cisterns based on the roof area and family size for the Gunung Kidul area.

In a large-scale, Dutch-aided program now underway in the north coast of West Java, high quality and low quality cisterns of bricks, ferroconcrete, concrete without reinforcement, bamboo cement and ijuk (palm fibre) cement are being constructed.

PDF of full document available to members (9pp, 350kb)