Environment, Food and Rural Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by David Wilks, Varyflush Ltd
1. Over 52% of water company output is used in households, fact.
2. The flushing toilet is, by far, the biggest single user of household water, using around 60 of the 150 litres we each use per day, fact.
3. For 160 years we have been flushing the FULL cistern every time, to flush away what is essentially always VARIABLE pan contents. The result is that about half the flushing water, on average, is completely wasted, water that continues to flow into the pan AFTER the contents have gone. That’s 30 litres of water wasted per person per day.
4. My revolutionary INTERRUPTIBLE flushing technology, in the form of the INTERFLUSH retrofit kit and now the full siphon version, SAVER-SIPHON saves every drop of this previously wasted water because it allows the user to STOP THE FLUSH AS SOON AS THE PAN IS CLEAR OF IT’S CONTENTS.
5. By logic alone, nothing can flush a toilet with less water because using any less would mean the pan has not been fully cleared.
6. “Push and let go” is replaced by: “Push, HOLD DOWN to flush, let go to stop”. It is no more complicated than that but you would not know it from the resistance that it has faced from Defra, Waterwise, CC Water, UK water, ALL the water companies and their allies.
7. It took two years to convince Defra to conduct a trial. The trial was conducted on a purpose built test rig at Herriot Watt University in January 2003 by the chief test person at WRAS. The tests proved that the INTERFLUSH or SAVER-SIPHON saves 47% of the flushing water, on average over a number of flushes with varying amounts of pan contents.
8. A contact at Ofwat recently informed me that Defra have now LOST the report.
9. In 2003 ALL the water companies received a video, fully explaining my very simple technology. They have done nothing but try to “kill” it since then because it saves so much water they see it as a threat to their revenues.
10. For all their talk about water being a precious resource and the need to save it, one water company executive let slip their true view on water savings, when he was drunk at a dinner: “Why should we save water, we are in the business of selling it, not saving it”.
11. This may explain why the water companies lobbied so hard, at the time of privatisation, for the inclusion of one extra word into their inherited duty on “water conservation”. That one word was PROMOTE so their legal duty became to “PROMOTE water conservation”, which translates into just talking about it.
12. Indeed, the water companies were further incentivised to dismiss water saving measures because the legislation made provision for them to make a good profit from providing new supply side infrastructure, in the form of civil engineering schemes.
13. This latest white paper, yet again, is steering us down the supply side solution because I believe it to be written with the benefit of the water companies taking priority over out national resource of water.
14. For instance, my technology can save the same amount of water as the proposed Abingdon reservoir can supply but at one seventieth of the cost, that’s zero for clarity. Yet my technology has again been dismissed by Thames water, in favour of building their new reservoir. Thames water will be borrowing the money for this and it’s customers will be paying it back plus the interest. This is bankers logic and we all know where that leads.
15. You, the government have been misled for decades by your advisers because most are in the pockets of the water companies one way or another.
16. A senior Whitehall official at Defra telling me: “That I will never get the interflush off the ground, the economy is more important than saving water”. Translate that into what you will. Either way, you cannot drink money.
17. RECAP: The flushing toilet is the biggest user of water and my technology is the biggest saver of flushing water. Therefore, my technology is the biggest water saving technology since the siphon became the sole flushing device in a British cistern, over 150 years ago.
18. This raises another major thing that you were misled on. These dual flush toilets that feature in the White paper on “Bathroom savings”. They are invariably push-button operated, which means there is a drop valve or flap valve in the cistern and NOT a siphon.
19. These valve flushing devices have been KNOWN to leak ever since they were invented. The siphon, which NEVER leaks, was invented to replace them in British cisterns in 1863, valves being outlawed as water wasting. In 2001 your advisers misled you into making them legal again under the guise of dual-flush and the “lure” of simple push-button operation.
20. In the USA, all they have ever used is valve flushing devises, their Environmental protection agency estimate valve leakage to be 35 litres per person per day.
21. This White paper is, yet again, promoting dual-flush toilets as water saving, which is a straight lie.
22. Britain is the last country on Earth to still have the siphon in any numbers. If the siphon goes from Britain, the ONLY flushing device that NEVER leaks, to be replaced by something that has been KNOWN to leak for 150 years, then it is gone from the world forever and we will have to find an extra 11.7% MORE WATER just to make up for the leakage and all under the banner of water saving. Is their a better definition of insanity, note the similarities to what happened in banking and the consequences of it
23. The Decent Homes Program have been removing leak free siphons and fitting leaking valve toilets, leaving the poor householder to pick up the tab for the leakage. This, to the poorest people in the land, what is decent about that. Yet another point that you were misled on.
24. You mention fitting hippo bags or other cistern displacement devices. The British Bathroom Manufacturers Associaton (BMA), the people who represent the people who MAKE the toilets and not the people who sell water said the following about them:
25. What about putting a brick in the cistern? The BMA recommends against putting any object in the cistern to reduce the amount of water it stores because a toilet that was designed to flush on 13 litres will probably not clear the pan if you use a lower volume and then people just flush a second time, which uses even more water.
26. The line marked “water Line” or “WL” on the back of every cistern is not their for decoration. That cistern needs that volume of water to clear a full pan loading, use any less and it will need flushing twice.
27. This is why water companies give them away, they just give the perception of saving water but mainly end up using more.
28. The only time water companies want people to save water is when they do not have enough to sell. Hence the temporary measures like hosepipe bans but never my technology because it delivers PERMANENT water savings and on a massive scale, 8.7% of UK water resources in fact. That plus the 11.7% from not using valve flushing gives a saving of 20.4% of UK water resources, £3.4 billion for consumers and 1.7 million KWh of electricity.
29. The water companies push 6.9 billion tonnes of water through 250,000 miles of pipes per year, which makes them the largest single user of electricity in the UK. Electricity that needs energy imports.
30. The whole world needs it but I have no chance of exporting as long as my own country of origin continues to try to kill it off.
31. The above is only scratching the surface but I have run out of word count. Please do get in touch for further evidence and further solutions. See videos etc at www.interflush.co.uk.
22 January 2012