Cullompton care home saving 6,000 litres a day after hidden leaks

Somewhere behind the walls of a Cullompton care home, water had been quietly slipping away. Nobody had spotted it, and nobody was being charged any less for it. Then a team from South West Water came to take a proper look.

Culm Valley Care Home now saves around 6,000 litres of water every day after a water efficiency visit found leaks that had been hidden inside its plumbing. That works out at roughly 130,000 litres a month.

What the visit found

South West Water sends water efficiency experts out to businesses to fit water-saving devices and then to hunt down internal plumbing losses, repairing them on the spot where they can. Culm Valley Care Home booked a visit last month, and the team installed 43 water-saving devices across the site. A few leaks were found and fixed while they were there.

The result was an immediate drop in the home’s daily water use, and a saving big enough to feed into its wider sustainability plans.

Simple fixes, real savings

Megan Williams, Water Efficiency Delivery Manager for South West Water, said the site showed how much a high-use building can claw back without major work.

“This is a good example of how a site with high daily water use can achieve significant savings through relatively simple interventions,” she said. “We are proud to have worked with the care home to install the water saving devices and they will now save an impressive 130,000 litres of water a month.”

The visit is part of a wider run of water efficiency calls South West Water is making to help businesses look at how they use water and trim their bills at the same time.

A talking point for residents

Culm Valley Care Home is a residential home for the elderly and disabled, offering long and short-term residential and nursing care for up to 61 people, with nurses on duty around the clock.

Ann Bright, Manager for Culm Valley Care Home, said the timing made sense with a hosepipe ban already in place locally.

“We are always looking at ways to reduce our carbon footprint and work collaboratively with other services,” she said. “When South West Water offered this service, especially with the hosepipe ban in the area, we thought it would be helpful to us to support with conserving water, the upside to this will hopefully be a reduction in the water bill.”

The ban turned out to be a conversation starter inside the home too.

“It has also been a topic of conversation with the residents asking if they remember having ever been in hosepipe bans in the past. Some of the residents did remember and we spent some time reminiscing.”

Booking a visit

South West Water runs efficiency visits all year round for businesses that want to cut their water use. You can read more about the visits, along with water-saving tips, on the South West Water businesses and retailers page.