Week 5 Blog Post

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Last week in lab, a lot more calculations were made to try and finalize our designs. For the greywater catchment portion of the project, since we want to reduce grey water in the building, we first needed to figure how much is being used right now. So far we know the following:
The building has
  • six stories with two-floors of clinical skills labs
  • 1 bathroom per floor
    • Women 
      • 6 toilets, 
      • 4 sinks
    • Men
      • 4 toilets,
      • 2 urinals, and
      • 4 sinks
The building has water fixtures with the following rate:
  • Toilet - 1.6 gal/f
  • Sink - 2.2 gal/min
  • Urinal - 1 gal/f
Students found solution to reduce water usage in this part of the building which is by replacing water fixtures as follows,
  • Men
    • 2 toilets,
    • 4 urinals, 
    • 4 sinks
  • For toilet: American Standard Brand “Champion Pro” Toilet - 1.28 gallons per flush, gravity flush mechanism
  • For urinal: American Standard Bran “Decorum” Urinal - 0.125 gallons per flush
  • For sink: American Standard Brand “Fluent” Faucet - 1.5 gallons per minute flow, “WaterSense labeled bathroom sink faucets and accessories that use a maximum of 1.5 gallons per minute can reduce a sink's water flow by 30 percent or more from the standard flow of 2.2 gallons per minute”
Additional data were also considered such as
  • Average flushes per day = 5
  • Average work/school = 12 hours
  • Average flushes per day at building = 2.5
  • 1 person (toilet) = 4 gallons per day
  • 1 person (urinal) = 2.5 gallons per day
Even though we found solutions to making the equipment more efficient, it is hard to estimate the exact number of gallons that would be saved with or adjustments without knowing how many people are using these facilities every day. Currently, there are 1086 med students and 3247full-time faculty at the med school. One idea we had to find how many people are using the building in a day is by comparing it to a Drexel Medical School building. In week 6, we will continue our research to find how much water is actually used in a day.

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