Page 85 - Build 165

Departments/Research By Sandi Sirikhanchai, BRANZ Assistant Building Scientist
Water use in dwellings
How much water do New Zealand households use daily? Do personal perceptions match reality? These are some of the questions being asked by BRANZ scientists studying Kiwis’ residential water use.
BRANZ SCIENTISTS working on the BRANZ Household Water Use Study are aiming to understand household water-use habits and identify just how water conscious New Zealanders are.
A joint e ort
BRANZ has partnered with Water New Zealand, 34 local councils (the water suppliers) and 600 survey respondents in this 3-year, nationwide project. There are three major phases to the study:
● Paper-basedsurvey~3,000dwellings.
● Daily water consumption ~600 dwellings. ● End-useseparatedout~300dwellings. Households participating in the second phase of the study will have a meter installed at their property. Half will take a daily water use reading and half a high- resolution reading measuring water use every 10 seconds.
Metering will be in place for 12 months, allowing better understanding of water use in households across New Zealand.
Nationwide paper survey
In the first phase, 3,000 paper surveys
were distributed by BRANZ and local water suppliers to homes across New Zealand. These surveys asked household occupiers questions in ve key areas:
● Human – number and age of people in a household.
● Behavioural – how often and long xtures and appliances are used.
● Buildings – house, garden and land size. ● Outdoor uses – garden size, section size
and pools.
● Water end uses – number of fittings,
xtures and appliances.
The survey included numerous questions about outdoor water use around the home, as this has been identi ed as a gap in previous research. Households were selected at random by their physical water connection address.
Demographics of survey respondents
Interim results from the survey separated household occupants by life stage:
● Retirees (40% ) – those that stated their
occupation was retired.
● Families (16%) – those with children aged
6–18 years.
● Young family (6%) – those with children aged 5 or younger.
● Other (26%) – includes working singles and couples, families with children over 18 years and boarders, for example.
● No response (13%) – those that did not answer or did not indicate their age.
In the others category, 27% were between the ages of 18–24, and 73% of the households have people over the age of 25.
Rentals vs owner-occupied
In addition to understanding participant demographic, the split between rental and owner-occupied households was considered. New Zealand Census infor- mation shows that approximately 35% of households are rentals as opposed to owner- occupied. In this survey, most respondents to date (91%) owned their home, either freehold or with a mortgage, with only 7% renting.
Others (the remaining 2%) included reverse mortgages and leasing land. As more surveys are received, the study will show if there is any statistical di erence between rental and owner-occupied water use.
Build 165 — April/May 2018 — 83