Plumbing: The Rise of Water Metering

I’m Dan Hounsell, editor of Maintenance Solutions magazine. Today’s topic is, plumbing systems and the rise of water metering.

As concerns over water conservation grow, more institutional and commercial facilities are investing in — and benefitting from — water-metering technology.

For example, to support large-scale plumbing retrofit for the University of Georgia, the university's maintenance department remains focused on additional water-conservation initiatives. The university is using advanced water-metering capabilities to better analyze water use.

Says Mark Duclos, the university's director of maintenance and operations, "Prior to the drought, we had numerous metering points on campus, but not individual buildings. During the drought, we elected to install meters everywhere. We wanted to be able to look at each building and try to isolate which ones are our higher usage and look from week to week or day to day and see if we see spikes so we know if we may have some issues."

Each building has a dedicated Web site that shows technicians a facility's water use over the last year. This comprehensive information also can help technicians more easily troubleshoot potential fixture issues.

"We're trying to get that information out there so as managers we can better determine what's going on,” Duclos says. "Also, it's troubleshooting. If we saw a spike in water usage, it may alert us to a problem that we can catch earlier by use of the meters."

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