“Going green” is more than a movement. With climate change, an ever-increasing population, and numerous socioeconomic factors, it has become a necessity. Builders, developers, and property managers are responsible for integrating sustainability and conservation in both new and existing multi-unit commercial properties, including apartment buildings, student and senior housing, and hotel and lodging properties. Water conservation strategies are critical components of those efforts as reduced consumption delivers multiple wins for owners, operators, respective communities, and the environment.
However, there is always the bottom line to consider — costs of green materials, technologies, and associated services have increased over time. Due to the negative impact of COVID-19, the issue of supply chain has compounded the situation. No responsible party can justify significant capital expenditures without a tangible and timely return on investment. Thus, it’s imperative that water conservation is not only cost effective, but profitable as well.
Why the focus on water conservation? First and foremost, water is one of our most precious natural resources. In the western United States, drought conditions have reached crisis proportions and new laws and ordinances are passing regularly to address the issue. Even in states where drought isn’t an issue, water usage still commands a significant portion of utility costs. Nationwide, water costs are rising approximately 7-8 percent per year. Water conservation can no longer be ignored.
When it comes to interior water waste of commercial properties involving tenants/occupants, the main culprit of waste may not be so apparent. Ask any group of people, “Between showers, sinks and toilets, which water appliance wastes the most?” — the majority will likely answer showers. It may surprise you to learn that compared to sinks and showers, toilets account for the highest amount of water waste.
High-efficiency toilets are often installed to address this issue. Does that solve the problem? Not by a long shot. This is not to suggest that high-efficiency toilets are a wasted investment. Quite the contrary. They do reduce the volume of waterflow per flush, which adds up significantly, but mechanical failure of toilets is the main reason that causes leaks and the subsequent voluminous waste. A small toilet leak can waste up to 250 gallons of water per day; an open flapper can waste up to 5,000 gallons per day. The truth is that with time, toilets will inevitably suffer from mechanical breakdown.
Normally, leaks are readily detectable on showers and sinks. The dripping faucet or showerhead is visible. With toilets, leaks can go completely undetected because the waste is going down the drain. Sometimes, the leak is audible — a toilet is flushed and the tank never fills up. We’re all familiar with “jiggling the handle.” However, even those leaks are often missed because tenants, occupants, or guests don’t stay in the bathroom long enough to listen for a full flush cycle, which is approximately 30 seconds.
Okay, so toilets leak. But how bad is it really? According to research conducted by numerous municipal water agencies, 20 percent of all toilets leak at any given time. Here’s what our *findings revealed:
Looking at the numbers, you can easily see that a significant portion of your net operating income may literally be going down the drain.
Some owners and developers get offended by those statistics. “Not my toilets! We only install quality appliances!” Again, despite the quality of a toilet, the simple mechanics of toilet parts, like the rubber flapper, inevitably breakdown and cause leaks.
The answer appears simple: replace the bad parts and fix the leaks. As we covered earlier, the vast majority of leaks can and do go undetected. Unless your maintenance staff is performing regular maintenance checks, a leak could go on for a very long time, and that wasted water is lost revenue. This information is certainly a wake-up call — water conservation is important for your bottom line. So where to begin?
Several toilet sensors are available in the marketplace, but most are mainly geared for consumer use. Some low-end products are battery-powered and rely on user awareness and interaction. For the disciplined do-it-yourselfer, those products provide a simple and inexpensive means of detection and monitoring. However, residential solutions do not scale well and are impractical for commercial use. An alternative is a high-end mechanical solution, but the “mechanical” components
will eventually break down and leaks will still go undetected.
One more extreme technical solution for commercial applications is the auto shut-off valve. When a leak is detected, the respective valve shuts off entirely. The problem with those is that one small leak could shut down the entire flow of water into a building (or at least a large portion of it). Not an ideal situation with multiple tenants, employees, or guests. WiFi-based systems are unreliable and not designed to handle the volume of monitoring and reporting needed for large commercial properties. For commercial use, a more robust system that can identify leaks and report them in real-time is needed.
Through more recent technology, there exists the ability to detect and monitor toilet water waste in real-time. IoT (Internet of Things) devices with monitoring are proving to be the most reliable and effective. IoT devices use low-frequency transmitters, repeaters (creating a “mesh” to strengthen the sensor signals), and hubs (one per property/campus to consolidate the information) to send data through the cloud where it is then disseminated accordingly. The battery life of these sensors is normally several years, and they function 24/7, so they’re highly practical and functional. An IoT sensor system also allows for better scaling and reliability compared to WiFi alone, which is extremely important when your property spans a sizable area.
Additionally, the collected data needs to generate actionable insights — real-time alerts and workorders prioritized by volume of leakage. The system should also include an integrated dashboard that can aggregate and organize all data points for analysis, assessment, and reporting.
By effectively monitoring toilet water waste alone, you could reduce property water utility costs by over 20 percent while increasing net operating income and equity value. Below is a case study utilizing IoT toilet sensors with MaaS (monitoring as a system).
It’s important to note that in the second year, the only reoccurring cost is the monitoring fee, thus ROI increases dramatically.
Going back to the start of this article, a successful water conservation program should not only be cost effective, but profitable as well. Implementing an IoT sensor system that provides 24/7 detection, monitoring, actionable insights, and reporting is a great way to reach your water conservation objectives while realizing the fiscal benefits.
