Why your business needs a water audit

A comprehensive water audit would help your company reduce consumption, prevent waste and contain costs.

Companies of all sizes have seen the water sector’s significant challenges and price warnings from the industry regulator Ofwat. It has told businesses – including small firms, charities and hospitals – to expect average wholesale charges to increase by about 27% before inflation over the next five years.¹

Ofwat is allowing water companies to increase costs to cover a trebling of investment in future water supplies and environmental protection, and the suppliers have committed to reducing leakage by 50% from 2017 – 2018 levels by 2050. The strategy is to develop up to £14 billion of water supply infrastructure projects in the coming decades.²

This all points to the strong likelihood that business water bills will continue to rise above inflation for many years, which makes a compelling case for optimising water use.

Water audit process

Working with SaveMoneyCutCarbon through a full water audit, your company would identify the current water consumption of the property needs. First step is to request an annual summary of consumption from utility suppliers. This will show how much water has been used in a 12-month period, as well as the cost.

This gives a snapshot of water consumption which then could be used to compare against industry benchmarks for building type, or against equivalent properties. The data gleaned from this may indicate if consumption is higher than expected levels.

The next step is to identify the varied sources of water consumption with individual assets assessed across the building. SaveMoneyCutCarbon would review water fittings and identify flow rate or flush volume, which will indicate if these assets are within currently accepted ranges of efficiency.

To fully understand usage, we would gather information on how much and how often each asset is used, with assumptions on usage, or we would use monitoring and measurement technology if there is a specific requirement for highly accurate data.

Audit scope

A typical building audit will look at:

Taps and showers
Toilets and urinals
Water involved with catering or manufacturing
Tanks and building supply
Leaks
Washroom control systems
Usage and behaviour.

Before the audit, it is important that all necessary information is shared in advance, such as parking arrangements, site floor plans and any relevant health and safety information. On the day, access to potentially locked areas such as plant rooms and service voids needs to be considered.

A comprehensive water audit should:

Reveal how much taps, toilets, urinals and showers currently use
Identify any areas of leaks or water waste
Provide suggestions on how to upgrade inefficient equipment and give some estimated investment, savings and payback information on proposed projects
Carry out quick upgrades and fixes on-site to start saving.

Getting the baseline

After collecting detailed data, calculations can be made to forecast the baseline water consumption and the performance of different assets – toilets, taps, urinals etc. In the absence of actual measurement data, assumptions and data criteria will need to used, such as:

How often the assets are used each day and how long
How many people use the building
How many days the building is open per year
Costs of water, gas and electricity.

With the baseline established, the data will reveal what areas are currently efficient and which require corrective action. Baseline data may be able to show, total annual water consumption, consumption of various assets, how much electricity is used to heat water and the cost, how much gas is used to heat water and the cost, and the current carbon footprint

In SaveMoneyCutCarbon’s experience, this data is incredibly powerful, giving the insight required to start making operational decisions.

Taking action

Reducing water use, cutting water waste, and recycling water are the key work streams. A good audit report should put forward investment-grade proposals with return on investment calculations, enabling a company to see the “before and after” impact of the works.

Financial modelling should be simple, and it is useful to group it by payback criteria. For example, projects with a payback of 1-2 years may be considered ‘quick wins’ and not require stringent approval processes. Timescales of 3-5 years may need further investigation, and those over 5 years may not be possible for now, but worth considering further down the line as price inflation bites further, closing the gap between investment and payback.

The audit report

A purchased audit report should include asset lists showing what products and equipment currently utilise water. Project proposals should have scope of works which include information on replacement products specified. The products should be efficient and offer linear savings, or assist in the mitigation of water waste. Typical products may include:

Aerators on taps to reduce their flow rate
Sensor or push button taps to prevent water waste
Eco shower heads that reduce flow rate
Controls that reduce urinal flushing and water waste
Waterless urinals
Low flush toilets
Leak detection and prevention equipment
Flow monitoring equipment

Conclusion

Businesses need a water audit to help reduce costs and minimise the pressures from ongoing price rises. Associated with that are the benefits of reducing carbon footprint through lower energy consumption.

Water is also connected to energy use, directly and indirectly, with associated CO2e emissions. Taps and showers that use hot water place a demand on the boiler, directly utilising the building’s energy. Purchased water supplied into a building is produced using processing methods that consume energy.

As a result, each litre of water produced has indirectly used energy and has generated carbon emissions. And recognising the carbon footprint of water may form part of a company’s decarbonisation reporting, which is where a comprehensive water audit can help.

Bibliography

¹ Guardian (accessed October 2024) https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/oct/01/small-businesses-water-bills-england-wales

² Defra website (accessed October 2024) https://deframedia.blog.gov.uk/2022/08/15/minister-double-water-companies-must-do-more-to-reduce-leakage/