Dear water experts,
I have a rather unique set up in my home where we have thought of rainwater harvesting i.e. we have a dead and dry borewell and an open well with cement concrete rings and a depth of 18 ft or 6 concentric cement rings which sometimes gets mixed with sewage or storm water drain that flows opposite our gate. We have got this open well cleaned umpteen number of times but somehow and from somewhere the sewage water gets mixed up in the summer. We have tried to close the small openings of the cement rings thinking that the seepage of dirty water might be happening from the rings but to no avail.
So we have to depend on costly water tankers for our daily water needs. The borewell with a depth of 280 ft is dead and dry as one of our neighbours have gone beyond 480-500 ft. Life is frustrating because of this.
This year onwards I have thought of a plan to use rainwater harvesting in the borewell as well as the open well. I request water experts' guidance on this issue.
Rainwater from the raintop is collected in the first tank with a coarse mesh filter, sponge filter and leaves are eliminated on the roof itself by a mesh grating arrangement and filtered in the second tank which acts a percolating pit with sand, gravel, charcoal etc and a netlon mesh interleaved between them. I have thought of letting this filtered water into the borewell with another 10mm filter and a PVC pipe, taking care to see that the rain water is directly fed into the borewell aquifer and the open well simultaneously.
My question is, will this damage the borewell or do we still require a percolation pit near the borewell as some people suggest. I feel this percolation pit near the borewell is not necessary as the rainwater would have been filtered in the second tank.
Please advise