Water Sustainability Through Adjustable Pressure Management To Reduce NRW

A basic analogy to see how pressure reduction can lessen the amount of water leaking from a hole or crack in a piping system is to simply hold a plastic bottle of water in your hands and make a small hole near the bottom and watch the water drip out. Then squeeze the bottle, thus creating a higher pressure in the bottle and notice how much more leaks out of the bottle. This demonstration replicates what happens in a water supplier’s piping system. There are small leaks throughout the piping system and the lower the pressure in the system the lower the flow out of the leaks.

If you decrease pressure within a water system, you will reduce water loss. By reducing pressure by 1%, you will reduce leakage rates by 1.15% (variances can apply). The question is by how much are you able to reduce your pressure while maintaining adequate pressure to your customers. This is the balance all water suppliers must tackle, reducing water pressure while still maintaining adequate pressure for customers as well as for firefighting requirements. The resulting water loss savings in the main and service lines can be incredible in both volume and cost.