Water Usage Patterns and Water Saving Devices in Households: A Case of Eastleigh, Nairobi

Abstract

Water conservation measures are rapidly becoming a necessity in urban environments all over Africa and the world. There is little innovation and available information for homeowners, building professionals and practitioners to guide towards water conservation. Water scarcity has progressively increased over periods of time in Eastleigh due to increased population density from increased high-rise apartments. The study tries to establish how water usage patterns and water conservation devices can potentially reduce water consumption levels. In the study area, 96% of the families are faced with problems related to water supply and hence are forced to come up with water conservation and adaptation strategies due to the scarcity of water. The study used survey and descriptive research design, and collected data on water usage patterns and water conservation devices from a total of 230 households in Biafra and Sewage estates in the Eastleigh neighbourhood. The results indicated that 76% of the households did not have water saving devices while the other 24% had water saving devices such as the dual flush toilets, low flow high-efficiency faucet aerators, low flow plumbing fixtures and automatic shut-off nozzles. A unit increase in water saving devices will lead to a 0.512 decrease in water consumption level. The study recommends that low-income households use water saving devices and develop water management strategies such as water-saving plumbing fixtures, rainwater harvesting, and grey water reuse.

An Approach for Water and Energy Savings in Public Buildings: A Case Study of Brazilian Rail Company

“…Other technologies and devices are suggested to provide water and energy savings, such as motion sensor light switch, dual flush toilets, self-closing faucets, flow reducing devices, and faucet aerators. The potential for savings with these items is significant, as it was estimated that each unit increase of each unit of water-saving devices resulted in a 0.512 decrease in the water consumption level in households [52]. Moreover, the irrigation system and vegetation with lower water requirements can also be considered to reduce water consumption and consequently cost, after payback time [53].…”

Smart System for Stabilizing Water Flow Output on Android-Based Taps

“…Development in 2018 by creating a PDAM water usage monitoring system using NodeMCU based on Android is still manual, namely sending officers to customers' homes and recording them one by one [19], developed again in 2019 with research analyzing water quality [20] because Water resources have become a major problem in the development of social and economic development, so it is necessary to monitor the quality of water resources [21], water quality is influenced by many factors such as flow rate, contaminant load, transportation media, and site-specific parameters [22] as well as research that monitors Arduino-based water use which is considered to bless effective and efficient and requires a lot of energy and consumes a lot of time, the water ether used by PDAM is also still analog so that water usage data is difficult for customers to know [23]. In addition, the problem of recording errors, errors in the input process of recording results, and incomplete information contained in manual water meters make it difficult to identify when there are problems contained in the discharge of water channels or contained in the tools used; therefore another development was carried out in 2020 which made an Arduino-based monitoring system [24] and patterns of water use in households [25]. Then, IoT-based water flow measurement instruments were developed in 2021 to determine real-time water use by IoT-based users with good accuracy [26].…”

Desenvolvimento de rotina computacional com algoritmos genéticos para otimização do custo do consumo da água por análise de dispositivos economizadores de água

“…Assim, percebe-se que tecnologias que reduzam o uso de água neste nicho tem importante contribuição no objetivo de se utilizar melhor este recurso. Assim, de uma forma geral, o desenvolvimento de tecnologias que reduzissem o consumo dos pontos hidráulicos residenciais como por exemplo o uso de aeradores em torneiras e descargas duplas ocorreu em muitos países onde a necessidade de economia de água mostrou-se imprescindível (Ali et al, 2020;Morote et al, 2019;Tam et al, 2019). No entanto, deve-se levar em conta também que até mesmo fatores sociodemográficos podem influir no desempenho dos dispositivos como observado por Willis et al (2013).…”