Establish a baseline of water use

Process area: Water Measurement
Payback: 12-18 months payback
Complexity: 3/5
Adoption: 80%
Avg. save: Variable
CAPEX: Yes

Action overview

Use data gathering tools to ensure your site’s typical consumption is understood.

Tips & advice

A baseline is the starting point to understanding and reducing your water consumption, it should be one of the first steps taken, ensuring any successes can accurately be reported and any issues can be easily spotted.

1. Identify all sources of water to the site. This may include revenue meters from water wholesalers, private water supplies, or reclaimed water sources such as rainwater harvesting.
2. Subject to the makeup of above, all water sources should be fitted with automated meter reading devices. Where volumes do not allow, then daily manual meter reads should be taken.
3. Automated meter reading devices allow near real-time data, with trending of flow patterns and easy identification of erroneous usage. Therefore, it is the default method for baseline recording and ongoing monitoring. A specialist subcontractor will be required for this element, and they will directly arrange to fit a suitable device on your revenue/private meter and advise on the automated data reporting structure.
4. Assess your business for operational peaks and troughs, this might be daily or even seasonally. Your baseline period must reflect this. I.e., do not assume that day 1 is a typical day, you must ensure your baseline usage is representative of the current function. This may include known issues.
5. When fitted, AMR devices should be used to report to water management software such as waterline allowing trending, exception reporting, and correlation with billing.
6. This will allow a rolling Average Daily Usage (ADU) figure to be produced; this will form the basis for reducing your consumption.
7. You may further compare your ADU against similar businesses, to initially assess your water usage credentials.
8. Typical AMR devices have a lifespan of 3 years, ensure you continually monitor and reference the device, ensuring it is reporting and accurate.