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Water001 BIF Greywater Meter recommendation - Submittal

Posted by Sarthak Prasad on December 6, 2016

The Water and Stormwater SWATeam submitted a recommendation to the iWG stating, 

"Monitoring the water usage in the Business Instructional Facility (BIF). Specifically, both the total water use and the amount of water used by the raw water system should be measured and the data made available to the campus community.

BIF is unique in that it was constructed with a separate raw water system that conveys non-potable water to be used for purposes such as flushing toilets. While the system is in place inside the building, it was never connected to an outside source of non-potable water. Use of non-potable water for purposes such as toilet flushing, landscape irrigation, cooling, etc. is recognized as a sustainable practice (e.g., Asano et al, 2007; EPA, 2012). Data to quantify the impact this could have on water use at UIUC, however, is largely unavailable. Metering the raw water system at BIF would provide data about the temporal total and non-potable water demand at a typical campus class/office building. These data would be valuable to consider whether such systems should be considered in future campus construction and renovation.

F&S installed a temporary meter to measure the flow to the raw water system and operated this meter for approximately one month (April – May 2016), so this recommendation has already been demonstrated to be feasible. However, because building usage is highly variable over the course of an academic year, we recommend that this should be a permanent installation. We also recommend that the data be made available to the campus community to encourage consideration of such water reuse options."

See attached the SWATeam recommendation Water001 BIF Greywater Meter complete with comments from all the Water and Stormwater SWATeam.