Performance based evaluation of rainwater harvesting system in public buildings

Abstract

Harvested rainwater has become an inseparable part of sustainable development a long before term ‘sustainability’ appeared. Even though domestic systems have been investigated to some extent, there are few recent studies of larger non-domestic systems used in public and commercial buildings, especially in Russia. This paper aims to describe a combined performance evaluation of a configured rainwater harvesting system for a specific study case of public building located in St. Petersburg. The careful analyses of empirical and theoretical data set was applied while calculating water demand, optimal storage sizing and subsequent economical juxtaposition of scenarios. The results provide useful information for optimizing the economic response of every specific scenario in terms of payback period, initial costs and end use.