South Africa: A facility manager's guide to measuring water savings

Zawya

2 days ago

Why water conservation is key to sustainable facility management ?
Water is no longer an invisible utility; it's a vital resource under stress. Facility managers are on the front lines of sustainability, especially in public and commercial buildings where restrooms can account for up to 90% of water use. With rising operational costs, environmental regulations, and ESG commitments, water conservation is no longer optional, it's essential.
Whether it's a commercial office block, airport, hospital, or shopping centre, smart water management is fast becoming a top priority. Measuring and verifying water savings helps build a compelling business case for sustainable upgrades and ensures compliance with green building standards like Leed, Breeam, CE marking, and Well.
Our guide explores practical, data-driven ways facility managers can measure water savings, focusing especially on public washrooms where usage is high, visibility is low, and potential for impact is significant.
Step 1: Understand your baseline water consumption
Before savings can be measured, it's essential to understand current usage. This starts with establishing a baseline, ideally segmented by location, fixture type, and time period.
How to create a baseline:
- Pull historic utility bills (preferably 12 months) to calculate average monthly and annual usage in m³ (cubic metres).
- Use sub-metering in high-use zones, like washrooms, kitchens, and maintenance areas.
- Allow Propelair to conduct a washroom audit by counting the number and types of toilets and urinals in your washrooms and installing flush counters to provide you with an accurate toilet water usage.
Fact: A typical 6-litre toilet flushing 100 times/day uses 219,000 litres/year. (that's a staggering 1,460 standard household bathtubs, considering that the average bath holds 150 litres) Multiply by the number of toilets, and you'll see how quickly water use adds up.
Step 2: Install water-saving fixtures and track the difference
Modern fixtures such as Propelair's OneThreeFive can significantly reduce water consumption, but savings only become meaningful if they're measurable.
Example: A shopping centre with 20 Propelair toilets, each used 100 times/day, would save over 850,000 litres/year compared to 6-litre systems. These savings equate to thousands in monetary value, and in water and sewage fees.
Step 3: Use IoT and QR code tracking to monitor performance
Without visibility, waste continues. Installing IoT-connected fixtures and pairing them with QR code-enabled maintenance platforms (like the system built into Propelair), you are able to track usage volume by time period or location; identify leaks, and non-operational units quickly; and monitor performance trends to trigger alerts for overuse or underuse.
Tip: Facilities using the Propelair Connect platform can benchmark across multiple sites, enabling group-wide sustainability reporting and ESG compliance.
Step 4: Calculate true cost savings (including sewerage)
A common pitfall is only calculating savings based on water supply charges. However, in many regions (including the UK, EU, and South Africa), sewerage costs are calculated at 90–95% of metered water use—and these charges can exceed the water bill itself.
Simply stated, by passing less wastewater through commercial plumbing systems, sewerage costs are reduced. Together with the actual cost of the water being used, the total financial savings outweighs the water savings by far.
Step 5: Benchmark and verify results
To build credibility and secure future budgets for sustainable upgrades, measurable impact must be verified. Use tools like monthly water utility reports, smart meter systems, and IoT dashboards. QR code based asset tracking also helps. Conduct before-and-after comparison studies. Create water savings reports to share outcomes with stakeholders and compliance officers. These should include baseline consumption, upgrade summaries, projected vs. actual savings, and payback periods.
A well-documented water reduction case study can also be used for green building certifications, grant applications, or award submissions.
Step 6: Encourage behavioural change
Technology alone won't save water. Engage your building users and cleaning teams to reinforce positive habits such as placing signage in cubicles encouraging responsible flushing, running staff awareness campaigns, training maintenance teams to report issues via app-based systems like Propelair Connect, rather than slower manual channels or traditional reporting structures.
Step 7: Schedule preventative maintenance
Leaky cisterns or inefficient valves can undo even the best water-saving plans. Include your washroom systems in a preventative maintenance schedule.
Propelair offers a Periodic Service Plan that includes audio-visual inspections of toilet systems and surrounding pipework, leak detection, replacement of flow regulators and lid and seat seals, voltage checks to ensure reliable flushing and QR-code enabled service logging.
Proactive service helps maintain optimal performance and extends product lifespan—preserving your investment and sustainability impact.
Tip: Link water saving to your ESG goals. Measuring water savings isn't just a utility management exercise, it's an ESG advantage whereby facility managers can report verified water savings, reduce water-stress impact in drought-prone areas and demonstrating resource efficiency to investors and regulators. A connected washroom system like Propelair's provides auditable ESG data, a must-have for listed companies or those with international sustainability targets.
Make savings happen! Visit our webpage now to calculate your savings and learn how to purchase a Propelair toilet.
Conclusion: Make water a visible win
Sustainable facility management starts with visibility. With modern data tools and low-water innovations like Propelair, water savings can be measured, verified, and celebrated.
Facility managers are no longer just operations enablers, they're sustainability champions! Start with your washrooms: track usage, upgrade smartly, and measure results. Not only will you cut costs, but you'll also help preserve one of the planet's most precious resources.
About Propelair
Propelair is an international cleantech company that utilises technology to produce and install one of the worlds' lowest water-flush toilets. Our innovation replaces up to 7.65lt of water with 70lt of air to achieve an 85% water saving, per flush. We positively contribute and enable our global customers across the healthcare, manufacturing, retail, education, transport, commercial and industrial markets to change the way the world consumes water. [e-mail] | www.propelair.com | [phone] (EU) | [phone] (SSA) | [phone] (UAE) | [phone] (APEC) | [phone]
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