Waterwatch© Water Audit Fact Sheet

Waterwatch© is a residential water audit program that was developed by conservation program consultant, Mick Fiato. Mike Lints, Sc.D. created the engineering model, mathematical algorithms and computer code.

 

Features

  • The service has a low per capita cost. It is an inexpensive means to provide customer education and household-specific information on water use and conservation opportunities.
  • It can isolate and report on common problems, such as water wasted by leakage.
  • It is an effective way to encourage water-conserving behavior and a comprehensive and accurate tool for measuring residential water use.

 

Benefits

  • It is a means to facilitate conservation behavior by providing household-specific information on current uses and water savings potential.
  • It is an accurate tool to analyze high bill complaints, and help mitigate ratepayer concern about issues such as rate increases.
  • It is an effective customer research tool, capable of providing detailed data on customer demographics, behavior, enduses and appliance saturation.
  • It can be used as a “stand alone” program or as an addition to an existing conservation program.

 

How does the program work?

Waterwatch© is a water audit that models customer survey data and generates an engineering estimate that is correlated to a regression analysis of the metered water usage and historic weather data. Then, proprietary algorithms construct a statistically valid model of seasonal usage and apportioned, daily end-uses based upon the lifestyle and appliance use data obtained from the customer survey.  

Prior to Waterwatch©, Fiato and Lints created a very successful residential energy bill disaggregation program used by electric and natural gas utility companies.  Energy bill analysis is widely accepted by utilities as an education and conservation program. Several hundred thousand energy bill analyses are performed each year. The developers of Waterwatch© transfered the energy analysis technology that was appropriate to the task of analying residential water use.  The Waterwatch© program however, employs proprietary algorithms and analytic routines that are specific to domestic water consumption.

 

How does the water audit program assign water use values?

The model is built upon a database comprised of water use studies conducted in the US over the past 25 years. The Waterwatch© development team gathered water/wastewater studies from a variety of sources including: universities, government, water industry trade and professional organizations and environmental groups. Where available, regional or local utility water use databases can be utilized to tailor the program results more closely to the water use patterns of a particular location.

Historic, local weather data, obtained from a reporting bureau, is used to further analyze outdoor uses.  This algorithm allows Waterwatch© to factor rainfall gain, and water loss from evapo-transpiration

 

 How accurate is the customer report information?

The program will accurately model usage for most customers. Because it is designed for low cost and mass application, there will be some deviation on the high and low end of the scale. However, short of submetering and monitoring actual usage of a household, we believe there is no more accurate method to estimate end-use by individual households.