Voluntary Action Leicester, under the umbrella of the City Community Voluntary Service, manages a five storey office block in the Leicester given over to a number of charity groups. Deciding that environmental concerns were in the spirit of the organisation and of practical benefit to it, VAL both installed solar panels for energy generation and commissioned Polypipe Civils Ltd., accepted experts in the field, to design and install a Rainwater Conservation System to collect rainwater from the 2,000 sq. metre flat roof for recycled use in the building's thirty-three toilets.

The system decided upon by the Polypipe Civils design team was for three 110mm rainwater pipes each to take drained water to a balancing chamber and thence to a water feature tiered with filters before being fed into a specially designed 5,000 litres capacity GRP tank in the buildings basement. From there the water would be pumped via a 25mm diameter pipe [heat traced and lagged to prevent freezing] up the building's side to a storage tank to await redistribution to the toilets' cisterns. If the recycled water was ever insufficient to meet demand the tank would automatically switch to mains supply: if excess rainwater was collected then it would be discharged via an overflow with a non-return valve.
A couple of problems were encountered at the planning stage. First, access to the basement was too confined to take the 5,000 litres tank and second, fixing the pipe from the basement five storeys up the office block sheer side could prove extremely difficult and expensive.

The first was easily solved as Polypipe Civils manufactured the tank in three section for assembly on site and the second overcome thanks to the efforts of Reach Engineer and Diving Services whose members abseiled down from the roof to fix the pipe in place.
Work on the £18,000 project was completed on time within three months, much to the satisfaction of Alex Grealis, Public and Central Services Director "The installation went very smoothly." she said "Although the system has only been running a short time we have already seen significant water savings and we feel confident that the results of our evaluation programme due at the end of the year will prove very positive. It is rewarding to see that environmental and economic advantages can work hand in hand."

10th February 2004