Today in Ireland water charges are imposed by some local authorities
Domestic water charges were abolished in 1997, but if you are a member of a group water scheme, you may still have to pay a certain amount for your domestic water.
Commercial water charges:
Water charges are payable if water is being supplied for use by business, trade or manufacture.
This includes hospitals, sanatoriums, homes for people with mental or physical disabilities, maternity homes, convalescent homes, laboratories, clinics, health centres, schools or clubs. There are two types of commercial water charges. You can either pay a flat rate or your water usage can be monitored using a meter.
In Ireland, daily water consumption rate per person is 148 litres.
However, only 67 litres of this is used for personal hygiene and nutritional consumption. This means that approximately 80 litres of water per person on a daily basis do not need to be high quality but while using water from the utility for all your daily water requirements you are paying the same amount of money for each litre of water. The water you are using for washing your car, watering the plants and toilet flushing is treated to the drinking water quality. It is possible to use rainwater harvesting systems for such needs. They are widely used in homes, farms, public buildings such as schools, hospitals, and hotels and many other facilities.
How do they harvest water?
Its early versions were simply gathering the rainwater in a tank. Today, our rain harvesting systems are much more improved and efficient with the addition of a couple of elements, such as pressure vessels, pumps and filters. A typical rainwater harvesting system has the following elements:
• A surface to catch water, this is generally found on your roof
• Channels for water transport from catch surface to the storage tank
• Filters to filter particles in rainwater.
• Pumps and pressure vessels to pressurise water and keep water pressurised.
• Water storage tank to store ready-to-use water.
• Piping system to transport water to the points of consumption.
What will be your savings?
This is dependent on many factors. The most important one is, which part Ireland you live in. This is important to know the annual rain figures for that area. Also the surface you will use for catching the water plays an important role in the calculations. When some average values are taken, you can save about €1 for each square meter of your horizontal water catch surface annually. Rainwater harvesting systems pay for themselves in a short time, generally a few years.
Installation and Maintenance of rainwater harvesting systems
Rainwater harvesting system design and installation needs experience and training. Systems are designed to occupy minimum space especially in your garden. For this purpose, underground tanks are used. The pipe system is connected to the intended points of use. Pressurizing and pressure maintaining elements in the systems allow you to have constant water pressure in your rainwater pipe system. Rainwater harvesting system elements are made of durable materials and have a simple technical structure. These two features result in minimum maintenance requirements for the overall system. You may only need to clean filters from time to time and maybe some infrequent maintenance may be required for pumps.
Thanks the Techstore Team