ment practices for operations and mainte-nance personnel to save water in facilities. Assess Water Use Saving water starts with understanding your facility’s water-using processes. Conducting a facility water assessment can help you understand how much water your facility uses and the processes that require the most water. First, collect any existing information about the facility’s water use — data from utility bills and water meters — to deter-mine how water is being used from the time it enters the facility through disposal. Next, tour the facility, noting the equip-ment or processes that use water and how the equipment is performing — malfunc-tioning, leaking or operating as it should. Once you are familiar with the water use in your facility, you can use best manage-ment practices to identify the most cost-effective water-saving opportunities. You can then develop a plan to imple-ment those priorities, including payback periods for each measure and water sav-ings goals. WaterSense at Work can help you identify options for improvement and includes simple formulas for calculating the payback period when investing in specific technologies. Maintain Your Cool Occupant comfort is a main concern of building maintenance. Cooling towers, evaporative coolers and boilers require considerable amounts of water to do their jobs. There are a number of best management practices to use less water in mechanical systems without compromising safety or performance. Facility managers and maintenance per-sonnel can consider the following to increase the efficiency of their cooling towers: Minimize the amount of dissolved sol-ids in the water to allow the water to be recirculated more often before being replaced Implement energy-efficiency mea-sures to reduce the heat load to the tower: As the heat load is reduced, cooling tower water use will be com-mensurately reduced while producing cost savings Use other sources of water besides municipal water to replace water lost to evaporation; one alternative source of water is air handler condensate — water that collects when warm, moist air passes over the cooling coils in air handler units. Every Drop Counts Repairing leaks is one of the most cost-effective methods to prevent excess water and money from trickling down the drain. A toilet leaking a half gallon per minute, connect with CMM Online Bulletin Board SUBSCRIBE/RENEW PRODUCT INFORMATION Circle Product Information no. 216 on page 32 www.cmmonline.com 25
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