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ROUND TABLE REVIEW: SOLUTIONS FOR WATER & ENERGY SAVING IN COMMERCIAL ENVIRONMENTS
SMART IDEAS Andrew Tucker (far left) revealed that Thames Water’s rollout of smart meters was throwing up challenging facts, such as 25% of commercial water usage was from leaks
Smart meters & leaky loos According to Andrew Tucker, the prevalence of what is labelled ‘continuous fl ow’ across commercial sites (refl ecting the smart meter data they are gathering, and avoiding the term ‘leak’) is one of the most biting issues for water effi ciency. However, the increasing use of smart meters, a particularly well-used weapon in Thames Water, is revealing the losses to clients. He said: “Everyone’s been making smart meter data available, but we need to collectively use that data, and attack and eliminate continuous fl ow.” Tucker said that Thames Water’s major rollout of 60,000 smart meters to businesses had already revealed that 25% of commercial water usage is ‘continuous fl ow,’ meaning signifi cant leakage from appliances. He said that based on the company’s data gathered so far, “over 15% of UK businesses’ consumption can be engineered out by fi xing losses.” Warren posed the question of whether the regulation should require that “if there is continuous fl ow, there is an ability to enter those properties, to be able to address them?” Other delegates discussed the likelihood of cutting off water to commercial clients persistently failing to address recorded leaks, and Edward Barnes gave the example of some water-constrained US states, where there are “quite heavy penalties, so actually fi xing that $20 fl apper valve becomes something which they’re motivated to do.” Barnes added that in the UK the issue for regions around leaks was not so much continuous fl ow, but that the key peaks of fl ow: “It’s not the overall demand, it’s the windows of demand over two or three weeks.”
Solutions
While the group discussed some of the key innovations and strategies available on the market in order to reduce water use in domestic properties, there was more conversation around the existent stigmas and misconceptions around certain aspects of systems, which could be ‘blockers.’ These ranged from George Warren of Anglian Water strongly
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advocating greywater recycling, saying that ‘the majority of people would be happy for WC fl ushing water not to be drinking water,” to less positive responses. David Davis of eco-cistem (who sell a system which recycles condensate from air conditioning into WC fl ushes), said that on some commercial schemes, “you get to a level where people don’t want to adopt these technologies, that is a bit of a blocker.” Warren accepted there was also a risk that “we convince those that are responsible to be driving down fl ush volumes to the point where actually you end up fl ushing two or three times.” Davis said there were challenges to installing greywater systems, post-Building Safety Act: “We’re putting sprinkler tanks in, wet riser tanks, we’ve got nowhere to put waste water and greywater storage tanks.” He said that his M&E fi rm had put “no central greywater systems” into buildings in the past four years,” as there was “no space for them, you also have to have secondary drainage.” Tom Reynolds of the BMA said that his organisation was speaking to regulators about the “prospect of recirculating shower water,” but was experiencing “risk averseness.” He added: “It can achieve fantastic water savings, but there’s just a real reticence because leaping immediately to the worst case scenario, never mind all the safeguards that are involved in the technology.” Edward Barnes described how in Canada, improvements in this area came about due to customer demand: “People found showers were really weak, and quickly, manufacturers got on board and created partial loop showers, and that was customer driven.” Andrew Tucker said that in terms of achieving tolerable performance plus low water use, Thames water had “found a sweet spot,” and that electric showers were “even lower fl ow rates of around six litres.” the BMA’s Tom Reynolds agreed that there was a “curve” around user acceptance, and there was some evidence from Surrey University that showed a risk that people would spend longer in the shower if fl ow rates were reduced beyond acceptable levels, undermining the reduction goals. Naomi Sadler and others said that while WCs and basins represented most commercial clients’ biggest fi nancial leaks,
ADF MAY 2025
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