Water management - be smarter in the washroom

23rd of July 2019
Water management - be smarter in the washroom

Steve Nurdin, marketing manager at Cannon Hygiene,explains why smart water systems could be a key to meeting global sustainability objectives without having to compromise on good hygiene practices.

The Environment Agency predicts that there will be a deficit of three billion litres of water every day by 2050 in the UK alone. To give the expected shortage some context, currently half of the UK’s water consumption comes from commercial uses, rather than private homes. Reducing the water used by the millions of commercial washrooms all over the UK, in offices, restaurants and shopping centres, is therefore an environmental priority.

Until now, many building managers have assumed that to maintain the correct level of cleanliness in washrooms – especially urinal systems - water needs to be pumped through the pipes at a high rate to prevent bacterial build-up and bad smells. However, this is no longer required and good hygiene can be upheld using a fraction of the water.

The issue for many is knowing where to begin. This is where smart devices can help. The technology is already being used in homes to help consumers manage their energy use, but there’s a huge opportunity to extend this to improve water sustainability too.

Simply put, smart water meters work in much the same way as smart energy meters. Fitting them to all the water-using elements of a washroom allows businesses to monitor when and where the water is being used.

The real-time report the technology produces keeps building managers informed about how much water each part of their washroom uses and patterns can be more easily observed.

In most commercial buildings this insight could help solve a common issue with water consumption – where is best to direct focus and investment.

In the average office environment, washrooms use accounts for around 90 per cent of the water consumed. Often this is as a result of older systems, which use far more water.

But between urinals, sinks, toilets and even showers, the question that comes with choosing to make washrooms more efficient is where to start. Depending on your washroom equipment, the areas that will show the greatest reductions vary wildly, making it difficult to spot where best to invest. Having a smart water meter may tell you that actually, your toilets are highly inefficient, but your sinks are performing well.

Smart meters can also help to ensure that modern washroom equipment is optimised. Simply investing in new equipment won’t be enough, ensuring it reflects washroom use is the next step.
To take urinals as an example - older, more traditional models will flush water at timed intervals to try to combat malodours. While frequent flushing may have been necessary several years ago, microbiological cartridge systems can work to keep urinals hygienic without as much water use by flushing only when they’ve been used a set number of times during peak usage periods.

But understanding when these peak periods are may not be as straightforward as it once was. In a traditional office this would be between the 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday. But with flexible working approaches, office managers may find that the reality is actually far less regular than this. Meanwhile in other building types – bars and restaurants or even in football stadiums – it’s much harder to assess when peak times are.

And urinals are just one example. Mapping effective water use across one washroom is difficult enough. When you factor in several washrooms across one building, or multiple buildings, the task becomes more complicated. As well as helping to inform where best to invest in new systems, smart water meters help to make washrooms more intelligent.

Many businesses rely on staff to spot leaks and cracks during regular cleaning checks. To the untrained eye a dripping tap or urinal continually flushing may not be cause for concern. However it could be a symptom of something far nastier somewhere behind the scenes. Smart water meters come into their own when spotting faults in water systems.

These systems will show a leak in a toilet or burst pipe far before this is visible to the naked eye. Without a smart water meter, a burst pipe might only be identified after it’s caused significant damage. Using real-time data on water usage can help building managers to spot the faults far earlier and even notify them if a pipe bursts in the evening or at weekends. This can all happen before a leak has caused huge damage and resulted in high costs and a lot of unnecessary water waste. In a way, acting as an early warning system similar to a smoke alarm.

Water shortages are set to become the next global sustainability crisis. Using water responsibly is rising up the agenda and putting in place systems that help businesses do this will increasingly become a core part of their environmental goals and obligations as well as reducing cost.




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