Water consumption makes up a large part of any company’s regular bills, but it’s a necessary part of any working environment – everything, from offices to factories, requires a constant water supply. Water system experts from Total Water Solutions have provided this list of ways to improve your building’s water efficiency.
Use cheap, crude methods as a starting point
The best way to approach the cost of your water is through cheap methods – it gives you time to understand your water system and the ways that it’s used throughout your building.
For example, adding cheap water displacement bags into the cistern of each toilet can heavily reduce how much water is flushed away daily – if this shows a significant decrease in the overall water bill, then you’’ know that the toilets are (or were) a problem area.
The same can go for non-physical methods – making your employees aware of their water usage could lead to them being more conscious about the amount they waste, as could bringing in new rules about how often certain appliances can be used.
Reduce how much water leaves the building
Many people don’t realize that aerators (the ‘filters’ used in taps and faucets) can be replaced, and that they’ll have different drain rates depending on their design. The average is around 2.2 gallons per minute – meaning that leaving a tap running at half-flow for thirty seconds wastes over half a gallon of water.
This could even affect something as small as an overnight drip – one drip per second may not seem like much, but even a single tap that drips non-stop can add gallons to your usage each month.
Explore waterless options
The less water you use, the less you need to pay for – therefore, removing some water-based appliances altogether would make a big difference. There are some cases where water is necessary (kitchen and bathroom sinks, toilets, etc), but there’s other where water-free alternatives are commercially available (urinals, waste valves).
Remove some appliances
There’s another way to make some appliances water-free, and that’s to remove them entirely. If you notice that a certain floor or department always has at least one toilet free, consider removing it – not only would this remove an entirel section of piping from the system, but it would prevent an extra flush being wasted if the area is being cleaned.
Doing this on a large scale – such as removing one toilet from each of the five bathrooms in an office building – could save well over a dozen gallons of water per day, depending on the capacity of the toilet and its connected pipes.
Find alternative sources
Reusing water is just as effective as reducing it. Grey water harvesting is one of the most efficient methods currently in use, and simply involved siphoning off or redirecting useful water (i.e. from a sink or radiator) for use in another purpose (such as a toilet or heating system).
This not only reduces how much water you use, but reduces how much water your system takes in – after all, your bill includes the water that enters your system, not the amount that flows out of it.
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