Linton Village College (LVC) is a secondary school with a reputation for educational excellence. Part of the Anglian Learning Trust, the College has over 850 students between the ages of 11 and 16.

As a village college, the school is at the heart of its local community, providing learning, sports and leisure amenities for its locality, and recognised its responsibility to conserve water. The school engaged Zenergi to carry out a water survey to identify opportunities for reducing water consumption.

Challenge

Water benchmarking analysis was carried out, comparing the annual m³ of water for each pupil to set benchmark figures. It concluded that Linton Village College is using an excessive volume of water expected for a secondary school.

Analysis of the meter readings found that the school is consuming 1,000 litres of water every hour throughout the night when the school is empty, suggesting a water leakage. Throughout the 24 hours of the survey, 28,800 litres of water was used by the site, 55% of which was consumed when the pupils weren’t on site. Our calculations estimated that around 6,200m³ of water is leaking from this site annually, which equates to 78% of the site’s total annual consumption.

Solution

The survey investigated the causes of the leakage and identified they took place in the toilets and urinals. For a cost of no more that £2,000 to fix the issue, the payback period would be around one to two months.

Additional low-cost measures were identified that cumulatively should lead to annual cost savings of approximately £16,176 with an investment cost less than £2,500, giving a payback period of two months. This would be a 80%  reduction in the current financial cost of water.