Water Supply in India is now previewed as community based demand driven system, under which it is essential to enhance capacity of local community residing in villages and small towns to develope and manage their own water supply systems. Role of community groups is to ensure effective and participatory implementation of water supply system in their village/town, water quality control, financial management and effective operation and maintenance of water supply system established. Hence, it is evitable that such community groups are aware about the basics of water supply system, operation and maintenance of water assets and water supply system as well as basics of sanitation and waste management. This training course series has been formulated in order to enhance capacity of community groups for enhanced operation and maintenance of water supply and sanitation systems in their village/town. Module on Basics of Water Supply System provides insights on basics component of water supply system, installation and distribution of water supply systems, estimation and measurement of components of water supply system and drinking water quality control.
In such system, supply of water is either done in whole village/town for fixed hours or supply of water is divided into zones and each zone is supplied with water for fixed hours in a day or as per specified day. Such system is followed when there is low water availability, however, in certain cases, wastage of water is more due to tendency of community for storing higher amount of water than required. In such system, pipelines are likely to rust faster due to wetting and drying. However, maintenance can be easily done during no-supply hours.
The lines carrying water from storage to its end use (stand post/ household tap etc.) are called distribution lines. Distribution pipelines consist of main pipeline connected from secondary storage; sub-main pipes connected from main pipeline and service/branch pipes connected from sub-main for distribution to households. Generally, Mild Steel (MS), Galvanised Iron (GI), High Density Polyethylene (HDPE)/ Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) pipes, Ductile Iron (DI) pipe with 100-1200 mm diameter are used in distribution. These lines are generally underground (1-3 Mtr below ground). Valves are used to control the distribution.