When we studied the availability of rainwater in Delft, we had a bad surprise… Even with a clever design strongly inspired by nature and the life’s principle and despite good environmental conditions, we will not be able to collect enough water to meet the demand…
Back to the observation of nature, we took once again the trees as model. Trees are able to tap water from the ground, even in deserts, using transpiration to power the circulations. We investigated in this direction to see if we can tap water from the ground through the basement of the structure. If possible, it will create an interesting win-win situation, because the basement would provide both stability and water to the structure, just like the root of the trees!
Good news with the ground water: it is really easy to tap it in Delft as the piezometric level (which is the depth at which you start finding water) is almost 0 m. It means that every hole you dig in the soil will drain water from the surroundings. Unfortunately, it is hard to make an estimation of the amount of water we could drain with our system.
Yet, we think that this use of the local resources will reduce the dependence of the future faculty of bio-based engineering on external water supply.
