Water, water, everywhere on one Blackburn new homes development

Not everyone accepts that single dwelling grey water recycling is economic or sensible. Waterwise, a joint venture of Anglian Water and Beazer Homes, approaches water recycling from a very different angle from that employed by the likes of Water Dynamics. Last year Waterwise was runner-up in the Building Homes Innovations Awards. This year the concept is being demonstrated on a site in Blackburn where 123 Beazer homes are being built. Over 40 have been completed and the scheme is up and running without a hitch.

Waterwise is, strictly speaking, black water recycling, not grey water. No attempt is made to separate waste water from each house. Instead, it all feeds into a single treatment plant housed in a building no larger than a single garage. After treatment, a third of the water is fed into an estate-wide ring main from which all the cisterns are filled while the remaining two-thirds is released into a nearby water course.

If for any reason the treatment plant fails, the ring main is switched over to regular North West Water supplies. The householder is therefore almost completely unaware that they are using recycled water anywhere, other than the agreeable task of paying smaller bills for water supply and sewage treatment to two separate companies.

While North West Water charges for the metered potable water supply, Beazer’s homebuyers are billed separately for sewage by AB Water Services, operator of the Waterwise system. The amount of this second bill is worked out in proportion to the metered water supply - the recycled water is not metered. The householder saves money by using less water: Waterwise makes money by treating the black water.

Beazer likes the system because it enables it to bring forward land that might otherwise be hard to develop by taking load away from the existing sewers. Group technical manager, Kendrick Jackson, says: “We envisage that using Waterwise will enable us to bring forward land that might otherwise be difficult to develop.” Waterwise hopes the success of its Blackburn scheme will encourage other developers to take up the system.