Part G of England and Wales Building Regulations covers water use and sanitation and all new homes and conversions are now required to meet new water efficiency targets. It was updated in April 2010 to include a new section on water efficiency. In order to comply with this change, all new houses must be shown to use less than 125 litres of water per person per day. This can be proven by completing a Water Usage Calculation. In practice this means that developers will now have to consider what types of taps, showers, WC’s, baths and other appliances they will be fitting.
We are able to complete this complicated calculation for you within 24hrs. We will send you our custom-made report to show compliance with Section 17K of Part G. You are required to produce a Water Usage Calculation for each house type. If your development is being built to the Code for Sustainable Homes standard, your water limit could be as low as 80 litres per person/day.
There are two main routes for developers to take. Firstly rainwater harvesting systems can be installed to capture rainwater and reuse it in WCs, washing machines and outside taps. Alternatively reduced flow taps & showers, more efficient WC’s, dishwashers & washing machines and sometimes smaller baths will need to be installed.
We can provide the formal calculations now required by Building Control as well as guidance on what types of taps, showers etc. will need to be fitted. We would recommend these are done early in the build process to ensure the proposed fittings will meet these new requirements.