WLR teamed up with Irish Water and Central Solutions to conduct water audits on two local businesses, The Granville Hotel and Lions Barber/Studio 77
WLR's Damien Tiernan joined Central Solutions' Steve Brown as part of Science Week to highlight the importance of water conservation.
“Every business, large or small, can make changes that will reduce water usage, and save the business money., but most importantly, it will help us protect our most precious natural resource, water,” Steve said.
Audit One - The Granville
Hotels tend to have a large water consumption because of the nature of the business - doing dishes, laundry, toilets, and showers, etc.
Michael Skehan, General Manager of the Hotel, took Steve and Damien on a guided tour, where Steve outlined three areas of focus that could help reduce energy and water use.
The first thing that was looked at was toilets. An older toilet tends to use between 9 and 12 litres of water per flush.
Newer toilets with a dual flush system allow people to decide whether they need a large (4-6 litres) or small (2-3 litres) flush.
Steve does not expect people to go replacing their toilets, but something that can be done to conserve water is the use of a cistern displacement device.
The device is a small bag that takes up room in the cistern meaning it requires less water to refill.
If we assume there are 150 hotel guests staying, and each occupant flushed a non-dual flush toilet four times a day for a month, the water saving, by installing cistern displacement devices, is around 54,000 litres each month.
Steve, Damien, and Michael then went on to look at showers. A shower with a 15 litres per minute flow rate uses 150 litres per 10-minute shower.
Installing a flow reduction device between the hose and shower head can reduce the flow rate to around 8 litres per minute.
That’s a 53% reduction and reduces the water use for that 10-minute shower from 150 litres to 80 litres.
"Using the same scenario as before, if we assume 150 guests have just one shower each day for 30 days, the water use can be reduced from 675,000 litres to 360,000 litres," Steve said.
Speaking after the audit, Michael Skehan of The Granville Hotel said,
“Water efficiency, and having a more sustainable hotel in general, is something we take very seriously. We recently established a ‘Green Team’ within the hotel whose goal is to make the hotel more energy efficient; all while ensuring we continue to provide a quality service to our guests."
Audit Two - Lion Barbers & Studio 77
You do not have to be a hotel to conserve water. Even small businesses can make a change.
The majority of water used in a salon relates to hair washing.
A typical shower head with a flow rate of 12 litres per minute can use 120 litres of hot water for a 10-minute hair wash.
The use of a flow reduction valve can reduce this volume to 80 litres without affecting the customers' enjoyment.
If the barber does 30 hair washes per day, the reduced flow rate can save 1,200 litres of hot water. That's about 15 baths worth of hot water each day.
“The water audits carried out in Waterford for Science Week are a great example of how all businesses can play their part in helping to conserve water," Christine Crawford of Irish Water said.
Water Stewardship Programme
Irish Water's Water Stewardship Programme is open to organisations in any sector.
It will allow participants to undertake comprehensive virtual training to better understand how to conserve water in their organisation.
The programme is delivered by Central Solutions, and more information on it can be found here.
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