Our practical challenge today is to do a water audit at church. This can be a fun activity to be done with the youth or Sunday School. You will need a notebook or paper to make spreadsheet.
- Running water:
- Find the water meter …. Take a reading
- Turn off all other water users
- Fill pot/bucket by running water for 30 seconds
- Take another water reading
- Calculate how much water is running through the pipes, in litres/minute or litres per second
- If hosepipes are used for gardening or washing cars or paving, find out for how many minutes and calculate the amount of water used per day.
- Enter onto your spreadsheet
2 Toilet and basins for hand washing
- Lift the cistern lid
- Hold water tap off and flush the loo
- Keeping the intake water closed off, use your measuring bottle to fill the cistern, measuring how much water is used.
- Find out how many times a day the toilet is flushed, and calculate the amount of water that is used during the day. Repeat for any other toilets.
- Wash your hands in the basin, and calculate the amount of water you use.
- Kitchen water use
Calculate the amount of water used for an event – e.g. a church service on a Sunday
- If cooking a meal, how many pots and using your measuring bottle, calculate how much water is used to cook food.
- Kettle/urn – how much water does the kettle/urn hold – use your measuring bottle to find out
- How many times is the kettle boiled to make enough tea?
- For washing up, what size sink or bowl is used (use your measuring bottle to calculate the volume)
- How many bowls, sinks of water does it take to wash up the pots?
- Are the pots, cups, plates etc. rinsed as well?
- Where does the water go? Down the drain or onto the vegetable garden?
- For washing cloths and for washing the floor: how much water per week (no of buckets) and no of times the floor is washed per week.
All this information is added onto your spreadsheet
| PLACE | WHAT | AMOUNT OF WATER | USAGE PER WEEK |
| e.g Hall Toilet | Cistern | 5 liters per flush | 5 x 200 flushes = 1000 liters |
This audit is provided by the South African Faith Communities Environmental Institute (SAFCEI)
www.safcei.org