Monitoring your schools' water use

It is important to keep measuring your water use to see if you are continuing to improve and spot leaks or wastages as they develop.

You could take meter readings weekly or monthly and plot your readings to see if there are any patterns or trends (e.g. what time of day water is used) in the data. You could use the Monitoring your Water Consumption information sheet to record you meter readings. If your meter is not accessible you can use your bills to monitor your water use.

A useful measure of the amount of water your school uses is something called the Average Daily Usage. This is the amount of water each person in the school uses per day and can be used to see how the water you use changes over-time. It will help you monitor progress you are making in reducing water wastage.

To find out your schools'Average Daily Usage using your weekly or monthly meter readings:

  • The water consumption will be shown on your meter as m3, you will just need to record the black numbers on the meter.
  • Divide the amount of water used between each reading by the number of days the water was used for.
  • Finally, divide the average water use per day by the number of students and teachers in your school. This will give you the volume of water used per person per day.

See the Average Daily Usage information sheet for a worked example of this calculation.

Average Daily Usage - the average amount of water used per person per day.
Average Daily Usage - the average amount of water used per person per day.