Reducing their environmental impact whilst still delivering a top quality public service were important considerations for Gloucestershire Fire Service when the time came to develop 4 new fire stations for Gloucester and Cheltenham.
Rainharvesting Systems Ltd, who have been enabling companies to pro-actively help the environment as well as save money for over 10 years, were called upon to supply bespoke rainwater harvesting systems for all the stations. The final designs mean that each system will collect some of the 800mm of the annual rainfall in that area, clean it and store it until needed for flushing toilets and other grey water functions.
The combined result of all the systems will be the capacity to replace 2.5 million litres of the mains water with rainwater each year – a volume equivalent to an Olympic sized swimming pool.
Gloucestershire’s new fire stations will benefit from rainwater harvesting in 3 ways: financial savings through lower bills for mains water supply and surface water drainage; helping to reduce society’s demands for water abstracted from groundwater, rivers and reservoirs which can benefit natural habitats; and keeping the neighbours happy – community consultation showed that making the stations as environmentally-friendly as possible was very important to people living nearby.
This is a policy held by the Fire Service and the local County Council, and so a suite of more sustainable building features is integral to each station such as air-source heat pumps and solar panels, in addition to rainwater harvesting.
