Every morning when I go into the bathroom to wash and shave, I run the hot water until it reaches the right temperature.This wastes about three quarters of a gallon of clean water each time. Say there are 24 million homes in the UK and extrapolate this: it broadly equates to 19 million gallons. That's a considerable amount of water.

Recently, Southern Water applied to extract 4.5 million gallons from the River Medway to fill up the Bewl Reservoir. Our wasted water would enable us to do this four times daily.

What can be done to correct this waste? A circulatory hot water system would prevent waste, but use more material and there would be thermal losses from the pipes. We could combine the hot water system with the central heating - this would constitute a major change in practice and requires storage and tankage, but is not impossible to achieve. We could have local heaters, as in showers.

I believe that this subject - balancing water loss against energy - would provide a good research project for a graduate.

John Lowndes FCIBSE

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ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Sustainable Design