Chartwell Cooperating Church did a water consumption audit as part of the Eco Church self-assessment process. We asked Heather Kikkert, a water engineer who works for the local council to share some tips to help other church communities who might like to also audit their water consumption.

Contributed by Heather Kikkert, Chartwell Cooperating Church

Finding the Water Meter

Example of water service line (circled in red), showing a blue ‘M’ as a meter and with 1.1M RB to indicate the meter/service line is 1.1 metres from the Right Boundary (here shown by a yellow line).

To understand your water use, you’ll need to check the water meter, if your church has one. The water meter is located on the service line to the property at the same place where you’d turn off the water, typically under a rectangular blue lid close to the boundary. Many councils show maps of water pipes and service lines on their website, try searching for waters viewer, maps, or call them and ask them to look it up for you.

Reading your water meter

You can request your past meter readings from your City or District Council. If you explain that you want this to help track water use and be more careful with this precious resource, I’m sure they will be thrilled and happy to help.

When Councils read the water meter, they only read the black numbers (cubic metres or m³), not the red numbers. This should reflect your billing information, along with the meter identification (ID) or serial number for the meter. There are 1000 litres in 1 cubic metre, so some meters have “kl” for kilolitres rather than m³. Waipa District Council has an excellent video on how to locate and read your water meter:

Tracking Water Use

If you want to track your water use, you should write down both the black and the red numbers so that you will see the change over a smaller period, say weekly. This will give an indication of how much water is used over each week, allowing for a variety of different facility users across the week. Take a reading every week for 4-8 weeks, noting the date and time of the reading (a phone camera can be helpful for this).

To understand how much water you’ve used, you need to subtract your new reading from the previous reading. You should also subtract the number of days between the readings to understand an average water use per day. An Excel spreadsheet can be a very helpful tool for this.

Here is an example of water tracking in a spreadsheet as done by Chartwell Cooperating Church.

You may also compare your meter readings with past billing readings to see the impact of fixing a leak or the drop over COVID lockdowns when facilities weren’t in use. This will give you confidence that your meter readings show how much your facility ‘typically’ uses across the year.

Here are some examples of water meters:

Is Your Water Use High or Low?

Tracking your water use should tell you the typical water consumption for the facility (the average water used per day). In the water tracking spreadsheet example from Chartwell Cooperating Church above, water meter readings from previous City Council bills were recorded. This historic water meter information was requested from Council who was happy to provide them. A volunteer than read the meter weekly from March through to April.

Based on the meter readings in the spreadsheet, from 2015 to pre-COVID restrictions, the church’s typical water consumption was around 40 kL per quarter, which is around 300-400 litres per day. The COVID restrictions reduced/stopped facility hire/usage and the water consumption reduced for that period. In March/April 2022 a volunteer read the meter weekly and found the water consumption was around 160-170 litres per day, which suggested that the facility hire/usage was not back to pre-COVID levels and/or leaks had been repaired.

For comparison with water usage across Aotearoa, look up Resource Efficiency on the Water NZ website. Clicking on the 'Residential Water Efficiency' box will bring up the average daily residential use by location. Note that for some areas estimates are used as residential properties are not metered. This is something you need to consider when looking up your location.

Spotting Water Leaks

When there is no one using water on the property the dials should not be spinning on the meter. If they are spinning, then you have a leak. If you have a leak, contact a registered plumber to assist you with tracking it down and getting it repaired.

If you don’t have a meter, you will need to look and listen for water leaks around the facility – running toilets and dripping taps are the most common leaks. You can also look out for wet patches on the ground during dry weather – these can indicate underground water leaks. A registered plumber should be able to fix these leaks.

Strategies to Minimise Water Use

A dual flush toilet is a great way to save water in a church facility. If you don’t have dual flush toilets, then putting a brick or bottle of water into the cistern is a way to use less water per flush. Alternatively, you can install a weight onto the flush system in the cistern so that it pops back up the minute you stop pressing the button. That means you can hold it if it needs a longer flush, otherwise it will do the minimum flush.

More water saving tips can be found here:

https://www.smartwater.org.nz/water-saving-tips/

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