Centro de Território, Ambiente e Construção
Escola de Engenharia da Universidade do Minho
Campus de Azurém
4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
Phone: + 351 253 510 200 (517 206)
Fax: + 351 253 510 217
Email: geral@ctac.uminho.pt
Title | Water Reuse for Domestic Consumption. A Key Element for Environmental and Economic Sustainability |
Publication Type | Communications in International Conferences |
Year of Publication | 2013 |
Authors | Coimbra J., and Almeida, Manuela G. |
Abstract | In a context of increasing social awareness about resources conservation, residential water management is essential in ensuring environmental and economic sustainability. An adequate management is attained with integrated solutions, which simultaneously reduce potable water consumption at least in 25% and enable the storage of recovered water. The recovery and storage of underground water can be ensured with the installation of a groundwater drainage network and an underground water deposit, which will supply the residential toilet cisterns and the automatic irrigation systems through independent piping. These solutions aim to achieve high levels of water conservation with the aid of known materials, components and techniques, with as little interference as possible in residential comfort. They also reduce the interference in the water cycle, since less public water is used for residential consumption and the surrounding surface permeability is assured in order to allow the infiltration of rainwater into the soil. Due to water reuse, the cold potable water consumption in residential buildings can be reduced in up to 50% when compared to average consumption in buildings without recovery systems. Therefore, the environmental and economic impact analysis of water reuse leads to the conclusion that the investment has a five year payback period, after which it represents a real gain for residents. |
Conference Name | SB13 Portugal – International Conference on Sustainable Building contribution to achieve the EU 20-20-20 targets. |
Edition | Printed by Multicomp |
Pagination | 153-160 |
Date Published | 2013-10-30 |
Conference Location | Guimarães, Portugal, 30 October-1 November 2013 |
Keywords | Cooperative housing, Sustainability, Water reuse |
Rights | openAccess |
Peer reviewed | yes |
Status | published |
The Centre for Territory, Environment and Construction (CTAC) is a research unit of the School of Engineering of University of Minho (UMinho), recognised by the “FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia” (Foundation for Science and Technology), associated to the Department of Civil Engineering (DEC), with whom it shares resources and namely human resources.
Currently CTAC aggregates 25 researchers holding a PhD of which 20 are faculty professors of the Civil Engineering Department. Read more
Centro de Território, Ambiente e Construção
Escola de Engenharia da Universidade do Minho
Campus de Azurém
4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
Phone: + 351 253 510 200 (517 206)
Fax: + 351 253 510 217
Email: geral@ctac.uminho.pt