Financial feasibility of end-user designed rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse systems for high water use households
dc.contributor.author | Oviedo-Ocana, ER | |
dc.contributor.author | Dominguez Rivera, IC | |
dc.contributor.author | Ward, SL | |
dc.contributor.author | Rivera-Sanchez, ML | |
dc.contributor.author | Zaraza-Pena, JM | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2017-06-09T09:24:19Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2017-03-30 | |
dc.description.abstract | Water availability pressures, competing end-uses and sewers at capacity are all drivers for change in urban water management. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) and greywater reuse (GWR) systems constitute alternatives to reduce drinking water usage and in the case of RWH, reduce roof runoff entering sewers. Despite the increasing popularity of installations in commercial buildings, RWH and GWR technologies at a household scale have proved less popular, across a range of global contexts. For systems designed from the top-down, this is often due to the lack of a favourable cost-benefit (where subsidies are unavailable), though few studies have focused on performing full capital and operational financial assessments, particularly in high water consumption households. Using a bottom-up design approach, based on a questionnaire survey with 35 households in a residential complex in Bucaramanga, Colombia, this article considers the initial financial feasibility of three RWH and GWR system configurations proposed for high water using households (equivalent to >203 L per capita per day). A full capital and operational financial assessment was performed at a more detailed level for the most viable design using historic rainfall data. For the selected configuration (‘Alt 2’), the estimated potable water saving was 44% (equivalent to 131 m3/year) with a rate of return on investment of 6.5% and an estimated payback period of 23 years. As an initial end-user-driven design exercise, these results are promising and constitute a starting point for facilitating such approaches to urban water management at the household scale. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | The authors thank Universidad Industrial de Santander for the support received whilst writing this paper. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Published online 30 March 2017 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1007/s11356-017-8710-5 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/27900 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Springer Verlag for EuCheMS Division of Chemistry and the Environment | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2017. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. | en_GB |
dc.subject | Alternative water supply systems | en_GB |
dc.subject | Colombia | en_GB |
dc.subject | End-user | en_GB |
dc.subject | Financial feasibility | en_GB |
dc.subject | Greywater reuse | en_GB |
dc.subject | Rainwater harvesting | en_GB |
dc.title | Financial feasibility of end-user designed rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse systems for high water use households | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2017-06-09T09:24:19Z | |
dc.description | This is the final version of the article. Available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Environmental Science and Pollution Research | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © The Author(s) 2017. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.