It was a great pleasure to host the 8th in our series of Water Conservators webinars titled “Achieving Demand Reduction Goals”. Andrew Tucker, Demand Reduction Strategy Manager at Thames Water gave a fascinating presentation about some of the amazing information that has come out of the smart metering data so far which is revolutionizing thinking about previous domestic water consumption assumptions and leakage.
He began by illustrating how the household demand peaks during the 1st Covid lockdown exceed those during the previous record hot summer of 2018, and that household demand has remained above normal levels throughout the pandemic. He then demonstrated how smart metering data has fundamentally changed our understanding of water usage, internal wastage & leakage. Usage and plumbing loss (wastage) is much higher than previously thought and approximately 9% of unmeasured household water consumption is wastage. A graph of number of households versus Per Capita Consumption (PCC) showed the average PCC of 147 l/h/d was significantly influenced by a small number of excessive high users and that the majority of households used around 100 l/h/d.
Andrew then went on to show that dual flush toilets were a significant source of internal wastage and around 5% of domestic properties and 29% of businesses had leaking toilets. He finished by stressing that the largest future potential water saving interventions, such as water labelling and fittings regulation were not under water company control but needed legislation, hopefully in the government’s proposed Environment Bill next year.
The webinar concluded with a lively question and answer session. Around 100 people attended the event, a record so far.
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