quantifying biomass for firing thermax boilers in Thika Industrial district, a paper presented to the KSAE annual conference at Milimani hotel, Nairobi

Abstract

Annual seasonal droughts of 2-4 months occur in Kusa limiting access of households to safe drinking water. This compounds the health and socio-economic disasters through increased water borne diseases rated at 10% morbidity and 63% mortality and marginalizing economically the resource poor through drudgery and wastage of time in water fetching activities. The introduction of rooftop rainwater harvesting 5 m3 storage tanks has redressed the trend in 30% of the households owning these systems that harness the 900mm annual rainfall on 80-100 m2 individual roof catchments. A study carried in the area through structured questionnaires, group discussions and literature survey revealed that the tanks operated at reliability and satisfaction levels of 44-59% when the guttering system covered 25% of the available roof area and 80-100% for coverage of 100 % for daily demand levels of 100 liters. An assured supply of domestic water at homestead level resulted in a state of water security leading to increased use of water per capita thereby improving personal hygiene for the rural community. Morbidity and mortality rates from water borne diseases reduced from 10% to 9.8% and 63% to 31% respectively for households with rooftop-tank systems. The study showed that well sized roof-tank combinations and appropriate demand managed strategies are effective measures for ameliorating household water supply to mitigate against drought caused health and socio-economic disasters in the area.