Water, one of the most essential components of our survival, is proving to be insufficient at fulfilling the basic requirements (amounts) to people across the world. Saving water is no longer an option, but a necessity to ensure life for our future generations.
Apart from the obsolete measures of water harvesting we need to come up with new and better ideas to reduce our consumption of water. In our modern homes, the water consumed by electrical equipment is much larger than one can imagine, especially the HVAC system. Hence, in this article, we shall be listing a few ideas that could help you reduce the amount of water being used up by your HVAC system.
- Choosing the Right HVAC Supplies:
To many, water consumption by the buildings seems to be an exaggerated issue. It must be noted that the HVAC system of a building accounts for almost 49% of the total water consumption by it. To take an informed decision and resort to the issue, the authorities first need to track down the water consumption of the building.
After this, the entire building should be surveyed as to device methods to maintain its temperature without consuming energy. Proper usage of ventilation will reduce the load on equipment that requires energy to maintain the temperature of the place. Therefore, it’s important to go for the right HVAC supplies to save the water in your building.
- Evaporation:
A significant amount of water is lost due to evaporation, in all buildings. Water passing through the drainage system is in the continuous effect of heat and can therefore be lost at a rapid rate. The temperature of the cooling towers of the buildings is usually hot. However, the temperature isn't high enough to kill the bacterias present in the water that passes through them.
As a result of this, the water evaporates due to the temperature, and the concentration of unhealthy bacteria and other microorganisms increases in it, which ends up causing severe diseases. Managers pass the water through a chemical treatment to kill the bacteria.
After the chemical treatment, a blowdown treatment is given to the water in order to drain away all the chemicals it carries. A rather appropriate system would have less water circulating through its HVAC system and therefore there shall be less consumption of water.
- Chiller plants:
Water-saving is directly proportional to energy saving. Therefore, to save water, we need to save energy and reduce its consumption. To start with, the size of a chiller plant, used to maintain the temperature of a building, should be proportional to its efficiency. A good and optimum chiller plant would cut down the usage of energy in the system and therefore cost less.
It would also check the excessive water supplied to the chiller plants and reduce its supply. The performance of the chiller plants needs to be optimized in order to reduce water consumption. The use of windows to maintain the temperature of a room or house would reduce the usage of chiller plants.
- Thermostat:
Even if the temperature of the thermostat is raised by a few degrees, it mostly goes unnoticed by the people residing in the room. However, what makes a significant difference is the amount of water usage. Raising the temperature of the thermostat by a few degrees lowers the amount of water consumed in the process by a significant value.
Major attention should be paid to the air handling systems. In the morning the temperature is usually low and hence less energy should be consumed to get it to a suitable temperature. As the temperature of the building rises with the sun getting over it, the building requires more energy to maintain the temperature. In the evening, the temperature again falls, therefore reducing the requirement of energy.
Conclusion:
Apart from the obsolete measures of water harvesting, we need to come up with new and better ideas to reduce our consumption of water.
The HVAC system of a building accounts for almost 49% of the total water consumption by it. A building should be surveyed as to device methods to maintain its temperature without consuming energy.
An appropriate system should be brought into play that would have less water circulating through the HVAC system and therefore less consumption of water.
