Clean water coming in, less water going out

You probably don’t notice one of the most environmentally important features of any building. And in truth, you might laugh when we tell you that it’s critical to the environmental safety and health of our new building. It’s the water and sewer service.

Clean water coming into a building and safe discharge of dirty water has been a critical facet of healthy building construction for more than 5,000 years. You can still see Roman viaducts across Europe and water cisterns in Istanbul.

Our water pipes can supply thousands of gallons of potable water each day to meet the needs of our members and 80 employees. Normally, sewer lines are designed to accommodate the same amount, but in our case, they need to handle a bit more.

That’s because we’ve installed storm water holding tanks capable of handling 4,500 gallons of water. That water will be used to flush toilets, water the lawn and other “grey water” uses – where the water doesn’t need to be treated, potable water.

Of course, we’ll be using low-flow fixtures throughout the building so we don’t waste water. A low-flow toilet uses 1.6 gallons per flush or less, compared with the 5 gallons of older models. If the building flushes toilets, say, 300 times a day, that’s a savings of 1,000 gallons a day – more than 350,000 gallons a year. That’s enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every two years.