A dual-pipe supply future for new homes
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The majority of households across England and Wales have one source of usable water in their homes – the mains. This water is world class in quality, drinkable straight from the tap, but why are we using expensive, top-quality water to flush our toilets?
“My six-year-old has already asked me this question. My attempts to respond sound pretty pathetic.” – George Warren, Integrated Water Management Lead, Anglian Water.
Providing this quality of water is expensive, both for water companies and customers. Whilst it is necessary to ensure water is safe to drink and meets the required standards, we do not need this high-quality water to flush our toilets and water our plants. Introducing a dual-pipe network will allow households to use a lesser quality water for tasks like these, reducing their bills, benefiting the environment, and increasing water conservation.
Future developments need to be future proofed, with a dual supply to allow for lesser-quality water usage.
This will reduce the costs and energy taken to treat water to an unnecessarily high standard, reducing pumping requirements by using local, sustainable sources. This uses water which may be considered a risk such as flood waters and rain. A dual supply will allow for the reuse of greywater, (wastewater from laundry for example,) and re-used. This can save significant amounts of water that would otherwise flow down the drain to be treated again.
Retrofitting existing housing and environments is expensive, and this won’t be changing any time soon. Installing a dual-pipe supply is cheaper during the construction of developments and allows for flexibility; a system can be designed to meet the specific needs of a community and be used with other integrated water management techniques, – such as rainwater harvesting and sustainable drainage systems (SuDS).
Integrated water management must be adaptive to the different demands of a community.
Houses and communities we build today will be here for the next one hundred years at least. Using opportunities to integrate water into our developments, people can better understand and be aware of their role in managing the water cycle. Additional pipework in homes needs to be installed sooner rather than later. Otherwise, the task of retrofitting existing building stock will be a huge expensive one.
A dual water supply has benefits to customers and the environment, especially in a future where we face water shortages and frequent extreme weather events. Communities will need to adapt and be directly engaged with the water cycle to combat the risks that we face through housing delivery and climate change.
