London Luxury Taj Hotel Harvests Rainwater

Writes Shirish Wagh, Chief Engineer of London’s upmarket St James Crowne Plaza “We always hear about Carbon offsetting and Global warming due to carbon emission by various industries. As a hotel industry we also have a duty to reduce our carbon footprint so that we can make this earth a better place to live for our future generations. Keeping this thought in mind we at 51 Buckingham Gate formed a green team to take this thought process further. “

“As the rains in London are almost constant through out the year, our thought process went into retaining and collecting the excess rainwater and how to use this rainwater for our property. The initial idea came as collecting of this rainwater in tank and utilise it for cleaning purposes. But as 51 Buckingham gate consist of 8 different building in U shape it was very difficult to divert this water into a tank via a network of intricate piping. Secondly, the water could not be used for human consumption, as it needed to be filtered properly before its use. Then the team came out with the idea of utilizing the water for the fountain, which was running daily consuming lots of water due to evaporation and also regular cleaning/draining of water. This rainwater was a perfect substitute for the fountain water. Then came the creation of a design of the whole Rain water system. The team came out with the idea of collecting the rain water from the roof through existing drain pipe line and then modify it and to connect it to new tank through a filter.

“Next task was to pump up this collected rainwater to a fountain tap and then the team had a brainstorming session coming up with the idea of connecting a small pump, which would operate through pressure. It took almost 2 months to finalize the complete design to make this system to work effectively as per the specific requirement of the property.”

“Once implemented this system is now running smoothly and the courtyard Fountain water is taken from Rainwater harvesting tank. Cleaning of courtyard is also done with rainwater. This has saved around £2500 in last one financial year as per our collective record keeping which has carefully recorded the savings. The entire cost of the Project is covered in one year.”

“This has been a unique project, which had been implemented very smoothly for the hotel and Carbon Trust of UK has also commended the overall efforts. This has further projected the Hotel’s image as a Green Hotel in the minds of Guests.”

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