Student water usage per day

razor8

i need to know the average water consumption of a student per day or over a year???????

i know the average is 150 litres per day for residential use

godtabh

depends on what its for? Student accommodation? Student cafe? etc

giving an average water consumption per student is difficult. Really depends on the context

mawk

some of them student types arent too fond of the shower iirc..:(

that probably skews the average

Badger2009

There is no special category for students. I don't know why a student would you less or more water than any other person?

I use 180 l/person/day, I thought this was the standard however I know of people using as low as 150l in certain circumstances.

razor8

I have a project to carry out for Dundalk Institute of Technology which involves the reduction of their water usage by 50%

There are approx 6000 people who use the college and this includes students and staff

Facilities include a gym and large canteen. I have yet to calculate the floor area which some consultants base their calculations on

Its current usage fluctuates from 60m3 per day up to a high of 120m3 per day and from observing meter readings the dip doesnt coincide with school holidays

150 litres per day is in a home scenario, workplace usage is calculated differently depending on the category

I am told for a primary school of approx 300 pupils the consumption is calculated as 4m3 per pupil per year which is an average of nearly 11 Litres per day/per pupil

So if I take an average consumption of 80m3 per day for the college, this works out at 13-14 Litres per day

No student accommodation is on the campus of supplied by the bulk meter

Any suggestions would be appreciated

Just calculated the floor area and i work it out at 35000m2

Dardania

any chance of installing a few meters and bringing them back to some headend? It sounds as though you have a base load leak somewhere...

Also, catering facilities would be a good area to target for reductions...plenty of water consumed there.

What about a plastic bag of sand in all the WC cisterns?

razor8

Unfortunately there is no budget for carrying out any works

But yes there a few simple ways to reduce water e.g. hippo bags or simply a 2litre bottle of water can save a lot of water

There is currently no urinal management system either so scope for saving there also

godtabh

Badger2009 wrote: »

There is no special category for students. I don't know why a student would you less or more water than any other person?

I use 180 l/person/day, I thought this was the standard however I know of people using as low as 150l in certain circumstances.

That's standard for domestic usage. There is different usage rates for non domestic applications.

The EPA have a god publication on this. I have a photocopy of it so don't know the tittle

godtabh

Is this a project or real life application? If a project I could probably give up a few pointers but don't have time to do it argue moment

razor8

It’s a design project for college, I’m a part-time student in the college itself and my project brief is to reduce the consumption on the college by 50%

Any pointers would be appreciated

Ray

Turbulent Bill

Without point-of-use metering I'd say it's hard firstly to quantify how the water is being used/wasted, and secondly how to reduce this by 50% (and prove it).

How granular are the meter readings (e.g., hour-by-hour or day-by-day)? If you can see the water usage during the day, and correlate the various peaks with the likely largest users (canteen at lunchtime, gym in the evening etc.), you might be able to narrow down the highest users a bit and target these. Likewise, usage that isn't related to people (maybe leakage, lab equipment, urinals etc.) should be more evident at night when the place is deserted.

razor8

i am trying to get permission from the college to fit a logger, but caretaker is hitting with me h & S bull****

it is only read on a monthly basis at the moment but i read it myself last week and hope to do the same this week

godtabh

an easy way to reduce water consumption is reuse it.

Look at brown water and grey water recycling. Water butts/water harvesting etc

Look at ground water recharge/storage

Lu Tze

razor8 wrote: »

i am trying to get permission from the college to fit a logger, but caretaker is hitting with me h & S bull****

it is only read on a monthly basis at the moment but i read it myself last week and hope to do the same this week

Check it at 2am, and then again at 3am. That will give you a minimum night flow, which would be leakage and flushing urinals and whatever else is wasting water when not needed. That would be a more realistic target on what to reduce. I think it was atkins did a study on this around 2000, estimating water use for the country on a county by county basis based on various things - washing machine ownership rates etc. It might give you a pointer on methodologies at least.

Just checked it up there - The National Water Study by atkins. Its available on environ.ie

Lu Tze

Also you could check the water pressure in the college, if it is high, reducing it will reduce the amount of water used.

If you ask the water conservation team in your local authority they might be happy to help you out. They might do a pressure reading for you, or if you promise to furnish them with the results you never know they might log the meter for you so that you can get your diurnal usage profile etc. Go in and have a chat with them anyways - it cant hurt.

matsil

What the water consumption "should" be, and what it "is" are rarely the same.

Water consumption is one of the hardest things to estimate / calculate. There are so many variables - including what it the flow rate at each point of use. For example showers - if there are say 20 showers in a facility, particularly and older one, then a single shower will use more water pro-rata than if all 20 are running at one......

Anyway, back to the point - if you were working in real-life industry, you would (or at least should) be working to set standards rather than gut feeling. This is important for design liability, or more importantly for professional liability insurance.

In my experience, the best sources for inforamtion are:

• Plumbing Engineering Services Design Guide.
• The BSRIA Rules of Thumb guide
• CIBSE Guide G - public health

If you are working on a "project" as part of your course work, you should get a positive result from referencing and using industrial standards, rather than "google engineering" as we sometimes call it.

Water Saving Tips.
Try...... SEI / Carbon Trust / CIBSE Website .... there are lots, but the most effective are flow restrictors / areators which reduce the flow at outlets without "feeling" like less water ...... and of course displacement in urinals etc. Careful on the regs though, there is a minimum flush rate.

sonic.trip

I done my thesis on this area on a school for my thesis last year. it was called "to investigate the potential for water management in educational buildings". I attached a pdf which may prove to be useful to you.

Also as somebody said earlier, there is no definitive answer for this, as it will vary from school to school. it can be anywhere from 12-14L per pupil per day in a new school to 20L for an older school. other factors include: caretakers turning off water etc. Believe me it took a lot of research for me to get my figure.

I hope this helps, good luck

Low Energy Eng

Approx 20 litres per student based on TGD's for post primary school (TGD003), with additional usage for the gym & canteen.

http://www.education.ie/home/home.jsp?maincat=&pcategory=17216&ecategory=54380&sectionpage=12251&language=EN&link=link001&page=1&doc=50431

Gym should be easy enough to work out, count the no. of showers X xl/min X usage, canteen, bit trickier, but I'm sure you could make a good stab.

Toilets are the worst water consumer.