Research Article Construction and Evaluation of Rainwater Harvesting System for Domestic Use in a Remote and Rural Area of Khulna, Bangladesh Biplob Kumar Biswas and Bablu Hira Mandal Department of Chemical Engineering, Jessore University of Science and Technology, Jessore 7408, Bangladesh Correspondence should be addressed to Biplob Kumar Biswas; biplobbiswas2009@gmail.com Received 4 April 2014; Revised 31 May 2014; Accepted 3 June 2014; Published 14 September 2014 Academic Editor: Maurice Millet Copyright © 2014 B. K. Biswas and B. H. Mandal. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Scarcity of pure drinking water during the dry season (November–March) is a major problem in Bangladesh, which needs to be addressed. is crisis has been further aggravated due to surging populations. Rainwater can provide some of the cleanest naturally occurring water and can hold a great potential in dealing with the current challenge of acute arsenic poisoning as well as physical water scarcity in many parts of Bangladesh. In this connection, rainwater harvesting (RWH) system has been constructed in a very remote and rural village in Khulna, Bangladesh, for a 4-membered household. It consists of a concrete catchment of 40m 2 area, a supporting and collection system made of PVC pipes, and two locally available plastic storage tanks having capacity of 2000 L each. e study also investigates the quality aspects of the stored rainwater, which include measurement of pH, alkalinity, hardness, total dissolved solids (TDS), iron, chloride, nitrate, and turbidity, using standard methods. e results showed that not only the quality of harvested rainwater is good but also the amount of water is enough for a 4-membered household to meet its domestic use throughout the year. 1. Introduction Water that covers about 70% of earth’s surface is an essential substance for the nature and the ecosystem of the world. It has a number of unique chemical and physical properties that make it indispensable to life and, in fact, it makes up about 60% of adult body weight [1, 2]. Water is reported to be grouped into atmospheric, surface, and ground water where atmospheric water includes moisture contained in the cloud, which precipitates as snow and rain [3]. Rain water, on the other hand, is a form of precipitation in which liquid water falls to the earth’s surface [3]. Rainwater and snowmelt are thought to be the primary sources of all drinking water in this world [4]. About 97.5% of all water on earth is salt water, leaving only 2.5% as fresh water, which can be found in various forms such as glaciers and permafrost and groundwater and surface as well as atmospheric water [5, 6]. So it is evident that fresh water, though renewable, is a limited resource. Reports revealed that 768 million people worldwide lack access to safe water, which is oſten termed as physical water scarcity [7], whereas 1.8 billion people are predicted to live in regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025 [8]. is has happened due to unplanned management of water resources, insufficient planning, and insufficient political will. Water scarcity is, therefore, thought to be a serious problem throughout the world and mitigating this problem is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century [9]. e Millennium Development Goal’s (MDG) target 7C calls for reducing by half the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015 [10]. Lack of access to safe drinking water is an increasing problem in the southwestern coastal areas of Bangladesh, where salinity in ground and surface water and arsenic as well as iron contamination of shallow aquifers are supposed to be the two major concerns for this. Such problems are consid- ered to be significant barriers to improving community health and reducing poverty. In pursuit of having drinking water, Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Scholarly Research Notices Volume 2014, Article ID 751952, 6 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/751952