The Ingenieur Vol 57 January-March 2014 The Ingenieur Vol 57 January-March 2014 | Page 24

INGENIEUR
National Zoo, Ulu Klang

Figure 4: Rainwater harvesting system components at
the National Zoo for hippo ponds and flushing toilets
The rainwater project at the
National Zoo was initiated in
2008. The objective of the
project is to use rainwater
as the supplementary or
alternative water supply for
the public flushing toilets and
the two hippopotamus ponds.
The system is designed to
store a total volume of 366m3
harvested from a total roof
catchment of 2,450m2. The
reliability of the system is about
70%. The average monthly
rainwater consumptions for the
ponds and flushing toilets are
271m3 and 35m3 respectively.
Rainwater is used to replace
river water for the hippopotamus

ponds, therefore there is no
direct saving in the water bill.
However, about RM250 a year
is saved from utilising rainwater
for flushing toilets. The quality
of the harvested rainwater is
as shown in Table 1 below. The
rainwater quality appears to be
within Standard Class II for all
parameters except pH, which
is within Standard Class RRK