A school in the West Midlands has become the first academic institution in Britain to have a rainwater harvesting system retrofitted onto an existing building. Campion School in Leamington Spa has had a Kingspan Water SmartRain system installed - a move that is expected to reduce mains water usage by up to 85% and lead to a saving of around 250,000 litres per year (equivalent to 416 baths).
SmartRain collects water from the roof of the Sydenham Sports Centre located in the school grounds, and uses it for flushing WCs within the block.
The rainwater is stored in a 5000 litre tank outside the sports hall, and if there is insufficient rainfall to meet demand, the SmartRain system will automatically default to using mains water, ensuring total continuity of supply.
The development is highly significant because retrofitting rainwater harvesting offers schools across the country the chance of having their own sustainable approach to water use.
Until now, only schools that were actually being built could be fitted with rainwater harvesting because of the complexities of integrating harvested rainwater with the internal plumbing of a building. This has meant the majority of existing British schools are entirely dependent on mains water, something which has both a high environmental and financial cost.
Furthermore, the SmartRain system comes with the Kingspan Water Vision pack of remote monitoring. The technology within this pack provides information about its operations to a wall-mounted control panel - making installing, managing, and maintaining it easy to do.
It has a GSM card installed within the control panel. A web address has been set up for the school, which can be accessed from any computer with wireless internet access so that the pupils can see how much water they are saving.
Campion school has been championing sustainable issues through its ABC (A Better Campion) Group. This voluntary group of around 30 pupils from all year groups, led by teaching assistant, Chris Philpott, has spent the last three years implementing various eco and green initiatives around the school site.
Head teacher, Mark Feldman, welcomed the move in terms of both improving the school’s sustainability agenda, and reducing the water bills.
“Campion takes its impact on the environment very seriously. This is an exciting innovation that we hope will demonstrate to our pupils the need for using water wisely. Like many green initiatives of course, it is a ‘win win’ for us because using less mains water also means the bills go down,” he said.
Chris Kerr, commercial manager at Kingspan Water, added: “We’ve done similar installations, very successfully in Dublin, and proved the green credentials and the savings that can be delivered by the technology. We hope Campion School will be the first of many schools across the country to adopt it and experience the savings it offers.”
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