REUSING
WATER
Flower Power Team:
Saioa Pagola
Alaitz Peñafiel
Miren Pinillos
Index
Page 1 …………..…… Index
Page 2 ……………..… Introduction
Page 3 ……………..… Objective
Page 4 ……………….. Hypothesis
Page 5 ……………….. Materials and methods
Page 6 ……………….. Solutions
Page 7 and 8 ………… Results
Page 9 ………………. .Conclusion
Page 10 …………….....Bibliography
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1. Introduction
Nowadays, in the shcools most of the teeneagers use the toilets and a lot of water is
waste when the schoolmates pull the chain in the toilet. More or less, six liters of water are
wasted every time the chain is pulled.
Besides, in the schools a lot of teenagers do sports and after the effort they do, they
usually have a shower in the school changing rooms. Before the water is warm up they
have to wait, that is why a lot of cold water is wasted while they are waiting for the warm
water.
Therefore, this project is about trying to find a way of reusing the water of the rain
and the wasted cold water in the school changing rooms to reuse it in the toilets.
After the research the main project consists of placing tanks of water in the roof of
the building which will collect the rain with a gutter system and they will transport it to the
toilets. But, the other project of reusing the cold water of the changing rooms had already
been invented so this project will develop this solution just for the probable implantation of
this second solution in Begoñazpi.
However, there is not a lot of information about this matter in the web. That has been
an obstacle for the developing of this project.
It is known that consumers want to spend less money in their bills and also
sometimes they are conscious about environment problems, environmentally aware, and
they want to reuse water. Nevertheless, they do not know how can they do it. Consequently,
the proposal of this project apart from implant it in Begoñazpi School, is also to saw the two
differents solutions to help people who really want to reuse water in different
establishments.
This project is going to contribute to solve one of the biggest environmental problems
nowadays, the spending of plenty of water in the toilets while a lot of people in the thirdworld countries which are needed of water.
Furthermore, there is another part in this project that is based in using less water in
the cistern. It consists of putting a brick in the cistern to save water when the chain is pulled.
On account of this, this project is divided in two parts. The one that reuses the water
of the changing rooms and from the rain, and the second one is based in saving a part of
the water that had been reused. Therefore, this project is going to have a double solution for
one environmental problem.
Finally, with this solution thousands of liters would be saved every day, taking into
account that in the school there are around one hundred children that use the toilets and the
changing rooms every day.
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2. Objective
This project has different objectives:
-
Reuse the water from the changing rooms and from the rain to use it in the toilets.
Save money.
Use a green system to develop the project .
Invent a new system where we can use the rainwater.
To do this the best solution is to place tanks in the roof to collect water from the rain
and with the help of a pump transport the cold water from the changing rooms to the toilets.
In addition, in the cisterns it will be a brick to save more water every time someone pulls the
chain.
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3. Hypothesis
The main hypothesis is that if this project will be carry out the
people will save a lot of water and money.
In addition, this project will have a brilliant consequences in the
school´s economy and in the environment.
Besides, the people will became aware of the value of the water,
because in many countries they are suffering a state of drought.
On one hand, the main solution is to place tanks of water in the
roof of the establishment to collect the water from the rain
On the other hand,the other solution is to reuse the water of the showers and use it in
the cisterns.
Then, the last idea is to put a brick that takes up a place of two liters of water in all
the cistern. With this brick less water will be used because when the chain of the toilets is
pulled and the cistern fills with water and the quantity of water needed to fill the cistern is
going to be minor considering that the brick takes up the part of two of the six liters needed.
Each time that a person pulls the chain wastes 6 liters of water, but with this method
he would save two liters.
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4. Material and methods
The part of the project about putting tanks of water in the roof of the building is new
and innovator, but the project of reusing the water of the changing room of the school for
using it in the toilets, it is based in Alberto Vázquez's project. This Colombian inventor
designed a simple system for reusing the water of the shower, which consisted on placing a
sheet with four departments that rescues ten liters each one where the water is
accumulated for using it in the toilet.The idea of this project is to improve making pipings
that will go from the shower to the toilet.
In those pictures is shown the structure of Alberto Vazquez's project :
This project is going to be divided in different parts:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
The researching is going to be continued and improved by an interview.
To show this project a mockup is going to be done.
An engineer is going to prove that the project can be implanted at school.
Calculate the cost.
Show the conclusions, positive aspects the project would cause.
The sources apart form the internet would be different people. A engineer who is related
with a member of the group and, with the headmaster and maintenance service the project
is going to be developed.
The things that are going to be used are, pipings, tanks, pumps, facts of the quantity of
water that is wasted at school and interviews.
This project is created for using it in Begoñazpi Ikastola but it also could be used at any
public establishment like, sports centers, residences, even in a community.
This project is going to be presented using a digital presentation with facts, graphics and
photos, and a mock up.
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5. Solutions
For getting all the objectives this project proposes three solutions which will work
together to get the best possible result.
The first solution in a new method to reuse the water from the rain. This idea
occurred during daily life. In Bilbao rains a lot so the main idea of this project would be to
reuse that water. In the top of Begoñazpi ikastola with a new gutter system, the amount of
water that would fall in the building’s roof would be picked and transported to a water tank
which will have a buoy with a sensor to know when the tank is full of water to stop filling it of
water and to know also when the tank is empty so it would be necessary to use the habitual
water resource for the toilet.
This sensor will also indicate when the water of the rain must go to the tank or
continue it’s habitual itinerary to the sewer. Then, as the tanks will be in the top of the
building it is not needed any pump to carry the water so the installation will be cheaper, the
water will go down through the pipings to the toilets. When the water arrives to the toilet and
someone flush it will be using the water of the rain so the school will save money each
month.
The second solution, is to reuse the cold water of the changing rooms. Every time
that someone takes a shower in the school, the water takes around 2 minutes to warm up
and all that water is wasted, so to reuse that water, the proposal is to put a temperature
sensor that will carry the cold water through a new installation to the water tank which (will
be in the roof of the building) with a pumps help. When the sensor detected that the
temperature is normal for taking a shower, it will close the pass for the water, and the water
which will be being used it will be wasted.
The water from the roof and the water from the changing rooms, both would pass
through a filter before they get to the tank, to eliminate any
rubbish.
However, for each time that someone flushes the toilets
six liters used, and it is too much. It is impossible to changes the
liters of water that gives the tanker because it has a special
system. As the picture shows. The water goes on when the cork
that has the tanker inside it is up. To change this and to lose less
water the last idea is to place inside an object that would have
the volume of one or two liters so every time the chain is pulled
less water would be waste.
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6. Results
After the interview with the engineer it is known that is possible the implantation of all
the solutions in Begoñazpi Ikastola. And the results of the implantation of this project, will be
really satisfactory.
With the results of the following survey it is known that from all the high school
students only the 25,7% takes a shower once a week after doing PE.
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Making counts and searching in internet this dates were obtained:
First, taking to account the average of how often the people flush the toilet in each
day which is of 2,13 times multiplying to the litters that are lost in each time that the toilet is
flush (6,1 liters). It is known that each person wastes 12,993 liters per day. Then, to
calculate the liters that are waste in all High School it is multiplied with 600 that is the
quantity of students that goes to the toilet in each day. Finally, during all the day, 7795,8
litters are waste.
Then the solution (7795,8) is multiplied with 175 that are the days of class the final
solution is that 1364265 litters per year are wasted. This would be 2360178,45 euros per
year because each liter costs 1,73 euros
Secondly, if a brick of two liters is introduced in the cistern the value would change to
1547658 euros and 469665 liters would be saved.
Apart from the toilets, the people when are waiting for the water to warm up they wait
about 2,6 minutes that are 5,6 liters wasted more or less. Taking into account that just the
25,7% of the students of High School takes a shower in the changing room at the end of the
year, around 4500 of students have a shower in the school which are 25432,1 liters wasted
till they wait for the water to warm up.
In addition, apart from the water wasted in the changing rooms, the water will be
picked up also from the roof.
THE MEASUREMENTS OF THE ROOF
95 X 30 m
2850 m2
75 X 40 m
3000 m2
25 X 40 m
1000 m2
25 X 45 m
1125 m2
total m2: 7975 m2
RAIN
According to the LEBB 80250 meteorological station, in 2015 in Bilbao rained 1079,72 l/m2
1079,72 X 7975 = 8610767 liters fall on the roof each year and they can be picked
Final results (in a year):
Cisterns: 1364265 liters
Changing rooms: 25432,1 liters
Rain that falls in the roof: 8610767 liters
As reusing the water of the changing rooms and the water that falls in the roof it would be
possible to fill the cisterns all the year, the proposal of this project is to put a tank of water
as big as possible to pick up if it is not all, the most of the water to reduce the cost of the
cistern water to 0 euros, this would be perfect but first, someone would have to investigate
how many tones could the roof stand.
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7. Conclusion
After checking and verifying the project it is known that the solution that it is
suggested in this report could be implemented without problems. It is known that the
implantation is possible because an engineer verified.
The implementation of this project would be really helpful for the environment
because the proposal to implement the solutions would be totally natural without pollution
and the installation will also function without using any chemical or polluted system it will
function totally with a green system.
It is true that the cost would be high but after the installation finishes the solution will,
apart from help the environment, suppose a big change for the school’s economy, the
school would save lot of money taking into account that with this solution the school will be
able to maintain most of the toilets cisterns full of water most of the years.
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8. Bibliography
http://ecocosas.com/eg/colombiano-disena-novedoso-sistema-para-aprovechar-el-agua-dela-ducha/
http://www.euskalmet.euskadi.net/s07-5853x/es/meteorologia/home.apl?e=5
http://elblogverde.com/reciclar-agua-de-lluvia-para-uso-domestico/
http://www.eltiempo.es/lluvia/
http://www.wordreference.com/
https://www.google.es/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=NKjpVv2VJPKJ8Qe_yJzgAQ&gws_rd=ssl#q=reusing
+water&tbm=vid
http://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2014-11-15/el-precio-del-agua-registra-la-segundamayor-subida-del-siglo-y-se-dispara-un-9-2_455059/
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