Water Leakage: Understanding Your Building’s Consumption

Every drop of water counts: water leakage means waste of clean water, but also waste of money. Undetected water leaks are often devastating to building structures, provoking corrosion and wall cracks, and causing substantial expenses for repairs and the water supply itself.

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WATER AUDITS WITH SMART DEVICES

Water audits using smart devices developed by Droople allow to gather and analyse fine-grained data from building water supply systems, to explain detailed consumption patterns, and efficiently detect then locate potential leakages. One of such audits was conducted in December 2019 in an apartment building, to investigate the causes of a sudden 48% increase in water consumption. Indeed, in 2018 this residential building of 29 apartments of an average surface of 75 m² registered a yearly consumption of 2 336 m³, versus the usual amount of roughly 1 300 m³.

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DROOPLE SMART MONITORING SOLUTION

Droople Water Monitoring Solution was installed on the main building meter, gathering flow data during two weeks. The installation allowed for visual data extraction in 10-minute intervals and its subsequent transmission via wireless communication to Droople Water Intelligence Platform.

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The data was then analysed by the Machine Learning algorithms developed by Droople, then allowing for leakage detection (such as existence of a consistence consumption plateau), as well as prediction of future consumption profiles (using trend fitting method, including seasonal variations).

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DROOPLE SMART FLOW  – TRANSPARENCY FOR BOTH OWNERS AND TENANTS

The audit results indicated the absence of the leakage, revealing instead an important consumption pattern. After a more detailed analysis, the event was attributed to the watering of the green spaces of the building. These insights allowed to take advantage of the transparency offered by the Droople iLink Smart Flow device. Indeed, the property manager was able to take charge of the related costs, which could otherwise be recurrently imputed to the tenants and may have become a potential source of long-term conflict.

In fact, for multi-tenants buildings of 20 apartments or more, a sub-metering solution is key in gaining full control over the water supply and usage. Such installations generate the return on investment already within 6 years. Droople state-of-the art Smart Water Monitoring Solution offers property owners and managers full transparency of water usage distribution, whilst allowing precise individual water supply charges for tenants.

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