Water

The Council has implemented a range of water conservation and efficiency measures, including cistern dams, tap regulators, flow controls, waterless urinals, water recycling, etc., run in conjunction with the energy efficiency programme reducing its water consumption by 43.8% over 10 years.

Waterless Urinals

Conventional urinals use an automatic flushing system using expensively produced potable or drinking water. Each urinal uses 9 litres of water per flush and flushes 4 times per hour consuming 25,000 litres of water a month. This water cannot properly treat the malodour connected with urinals caused by bacteria growth in the salts deposited from water which causes scale build up requiring regular treatment and maintenance.

Waterless urinals use a low cost replaceable fragrant bactericidal detergent rod, pad or cartridge, which is replaced as part of the normal cleaning regime instead of using water for flushing. 100% savings in water consumption is achieved as well as savings in scale treatment and pipe maintenance. Waterless urinals are installed in the Civic Offices, Pool In The Park, Leisure Centre and various other Council buildings.

Conventional swimming pools chemically treat and heat mains water, circulate the treated water in the pool and then backwash the water to the sewerage drains. Backwashing is necessary to remove contaminants and can be performed several times a day depending on the number of people using the pool.

In Woking’s Pool In The Park 50% of the cooling water is returned back to the break tank and 50% back to the balance tank instead of automatically backwashing to drain. The recovered water is then diluted with the incoming mains water and treated and heated again to the water quality requirements of the swimming pool saving both water and energy.

In addition to the various water efficiency technologies installed in its own buildings the Council has sold 1,540 subsidised home water butts to the Borough’s residents.

Woking Park Fuel Cell CHP – Water Recovery

When Woking Park’s – Fuel Cell CHP water recovery system is completed, approximately 1,000,000 litres of 100% pure water will be generated every year as the clean exhaust of the fuel cell CHP. Once tested and certified the water will be evaluated for utilisation in the swimming pool complex or Woking Park but may well have a greater value as pure water in the drinks or pure water industries.

To achieve its sustainable water resources objectives it will be necessary to employ the Thameswey concept for major water recovery schemes if the Council can find a suitable private sector partner. The first phase of a water recovery project in Woking Park, where the Council has three swimming pools and a large leisure complex, is in the course of development in conjunction with a water ponds project.