Dr. Seán Ó hÓgáin:

When we first started to study water usage ten or 12 years ago, the major way to decrease the cost of water use in the home appeared to be rainwater harvesting, that is, storing the water that fell on the roof and substituting it in place of treated water for use in toilets. That would give a return in the region of 30% to 33%. Other strategies are displacement of water in the cistern, by putting a brick or a bottle of water in the cistern to displace that amount of water. The use of low flow shower heads and low flow faucets are other options. We saw that rainwater harvesting was the significant way to reduce the demand for mains water. I will ask Mr. McCarton to speak on the school project.