Water of Life

Knowing how much water your school uses is a crucial first step in knowing how sustainable your water use is. Collecting water supply data will help you work out if you are a high water use school and if you could take more action to conserve it.

What data will we collect?

• Information on the amount and cost of school water use. At some schools water isn't charged for and you won't have accounts for water use. You may also use rainwater tank supply. In both these instances you will need to have water meters installed. 
• How efficient the water appliances are at your school. 

How much time will it take?

If you have school water accounts you may decide to collect all of your Water of Life data on one day of the year, or you may prefer to collate this data once a term. If you need to monitor the water meters on your rainwater tanks and reticulated supply you may need to set up a system to do this once a month. 

A small team should be enough to go through your water records for the year and transfer the information onto the Water of Life Annual Summary. Likewise a small team could be in charge of monitoring the water meters. You will also need a team to carry out the water efficiency audit, which only needs to be done once a year.

You will need:

• To talk to your administration staff and arrange a time to look through school Water Supply records showing consumption and cost.
• To check that you have a water meter installed on your rain water tanks and on you reticulated water supply if you aren't charged for water.
• Volume of a Cylinder formula (V= πr² h) to calculate size of rainwater tanks.
• Dye for a leaking toilet cistern test and a bucket and stopwatch.

What will be in our Water of Life Report?

Once you have completed a year's worth of water data on your Water of Life Annual Summary and entered it online, you will get a report summarising this data. It will have converted your data into efficiencies based on how much water each person in your school uses. It will also show the proportion of efficient versus non-efficient appliances at your school. Over time as you submit more data you will get trend information showing how much progress you're making to be more water efficient. You will also get comparisons between your school and other schools in your region and in New Zealand. 

- WATER OF LIFE Annual Summary.pdf

- WATER OF LIFE Data Collection Sheets.pdf

- WATER OF LIFE Teacher Support Activities.pdf