Ecoprod: Can you just start off by talking a little bit about your background and how you came to be where you are now?

Dan: I was buying my first house. I ripped out the old bathroom and plumbed in a new one myself. After I’d finished, I started to worry about whether the plumbing joints would hold. At that point I’d done all the tiling and obviously didn’t want to rip it out again, so the only way I would know if there was a leak behind any of the walls would be when water started dripping through the ceiling.

I looked online to see if there was some kind of device that could tell me preemptively if there was a leak before any damage had been done and there really wasn’t anything beyond very rudimentary products that would only monitor water flowing through and cut the water off.

Existing devices would ask me the time that I want water to be flowing and I had no idea what that time should be. Is 20 minutes enough time for a bath? How much time would I need to allow for a family to all shower? Basically, I wasn’t very happy with the products that were on the market.

That gave me the idea to create a new product that would monitor water consumption in a more intelligent way. I wanted something that would monitor water consumption and tell me why it’s been turned off and give me remote alerts before it’s turned off so I have a chance to at least tell it that it’s wrong.

At the time I was doing a PhD in electronic engineering and wireless technologies and so I pivoted to create a leak detection product in tandem with the university, and Quensus intelligent water management was born. The result has protected many properties ever since, including my own.

For example, I was alerted to a leak in my rental property that had a new bath fitted. There was a continual drip underneath the bath that was completely invisible and would have caused a very significant amount of damage had it not been for the leak detection system.  In our brand new house we had a frozen pipe that burst in the night and the product stopped it before it caused any damage. We also had a hose pipe handle come off so that it was gushing water all over the garden. My wife and I were at work at the time so it would have completely flooded the garden and wasted thousands of litres of water. As it was, my leak detection system swiftly turned the water off and saved the day again.

So, the device has helped me personally greatly over the years, but I also know from the data we have that our devices have also helped thousands more people to protect their properties and reduce their water consumption.  

Ecoprod: What was the process like from having the idea to having a prototype to having a viable business?

Dan: Really hard! The university did help with getting a prototype off the ground. They had various schemes for startups and innovators and I applied for as many of those as I could. It wasn’t until I had finished my PhD that I was able to focus on the product 100% and so it was only then that I was able to get a prototype to the point of being installed. I made it myself and had installed it into my own house, but installing it into its first commercial environment was still terrifying.

Ecoprod: Where was that?

Dan: It was Travis Perkins. They had run a business competition looking for new product ideas which I entered and won. As part of that we were able to install the product on a trial basis into an office block in Leicester and it was going onto a big two-inch pipe that was feeding the whole office block. A previous flood had caused a great deal of damage. It also forced them to stop working for several days until the repairs were done, so it had been a very costly and painful experience and they really wanted to prevent it from happening again.

The data we got from that installation was amazing. It was the first time the product had gone into a commercial environment and immediately we could see that it had significant benefits in terms of water saving as well as leak risk mitigation. It really opened my eyes.

A commercial environment is completely different to a domestic environment. In a house you have complete control over everything. You know what fixtures and fittings there are and who is using them, and you tend to notice leaks. In an office or other commercial environment it’s completely different. Many people don’t notice things like dripping taps or leaking toilets, or if they do, they don’t bother to report them. They’ll happily leave taps running without a second thought.

Originally, we set the algorithm just to mimic what was already accepted in the industry. If the water had been running for a certain amount of time the system would switch it off. We had an alert system and a dashboard so it was already far better than any of the alternatives, but it was still just a time-based on an alarm.

After installing it, I programmed it to turn the water off after 1 hour of continuous water use, which seemed more than sufficient for an office. But an hour later, it turned off! I initially assumed there was a problem with the product or with the algorithm. However, that was not true. It was functioning correctly and had detected a problem with leaky toilets. I learned later, after many years, that leaking toilets are a widespread issue that cause enormous water waste in the industry.

By the way, the client is still using and enjoying that device more than seven years later!

Ecoprod: How did you scale it up from that first installation?

Dan: It was a lot of hard work! We faced many challenges, mainly around awareness. Basically, people are interested in leak protection soon after they experience a flood, however after just a short amount of time, they soon forget and assume lightning won’t strike twice. I know from my own experience and from the companies I work with that that’s a big mistake – it can definitely happen again, and it often does. The fact that you’ve had one flood doesn’t make you less likely to have another one unless you do something proactive to reduce the risk. Usually the insurance company has to intervene and makes it a requirement.

Ecoprod: What about messaging around water saving?

Dan: Yes, that’s part of the reason why the messaging around water saving is so important as well. It’s saying everybody can benefit from this. You don’t need to have experienced an insurance claim for water leakage to benefit. The information that it provides you of your water consumption patterns can help you make significant cuts in water bills. Most people have no real understanding of what their water actually costs them. A single leaking toilet in a house can cost hundreds of pounds a year. If you scale that up across a whole office block then addressing just that one area alone can have a massive impact on costs.

We found in all our initial installs we were able to immediately identify significant water savings with no additional work involved. In one case we installed the product into a warehouse and within a few minutes of going live we knew there was a leak somewhere. We identified a stuck toilet flush. All that was needed was literally to turn a screw to stop the leak. Just that simple action, which took about two minutes, saved the company five to ten thousand pounds per year!

Ecoprod: Do you do any residential installations or is it all commercial?

Dan: Residential installations now are generally for insurance purposes rather than for water saving. It’s a requirement in many new developments these days. A lot of new construction these days uses timber which is a real problem in the event of a flood. We’re a partner with Aviva for escape of water damages, which gives us the opportunity to advise on many projects involving residential building and refurbishment.

For commercial, non-household environments the water saving benefit has more resonance. We do very well in places that have a lot of toilets or urinals. Our product is generally more effective and scalable than putting water efficient assets in because of the automatic valve shut off, so for example the system can shut the water off everywhere when there shouldn’t be anyone in the building, similar to the way automatic lights work to save energy.

That means that even if you do have leaks you don’t have to fix them in order to see the benefit. The water will shut off automatically when the building is empty, and you immediately save almost half your water bill without having to do anything else. We have found that’s a more realistic solution in the first instance to the problem of wasting water than trying to get people to change their habits or spend lots of money on new taps and toilets.

Ecoprod: Once you’ve identified that there’s a problem, how easy is it to work out specifically where it is?

Dan: Our system can give you second by second data on your water consumption. When you’ve got that level of detail, you can see exactly when people are turning taps on and off or flushing toilets and you can see the space in between. Ideally the space in between should be zero usage, so if it isn’t you know you have a problem and there’s a leak somewhere. We have AI in our software which understands the consumption profiles of the areas that it’s monitoring, so it’s very simple to just respond to any alerts that indicate anomalies. Then you can turn things off area by area or floor by floor and very quickly discover specifically what’s causing the problem.  

One of the main benefits of a system like ours is that you’re able to associate a cost with each asset. You can see immediately what the benefit is of fixing a leak and what the cost of doing nothing is going to be.

Fixing leaks is much more valuable than trying to change people’s habits or installing water efficient devices. We have data that shows that fixing leaks saves over 90% more water than installing water efficient products, but there’s almost no focus on fixing leaks in the conversation about water saving generally. That mindset really needs to change. Fixing leaks is vitally important.

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Contact us today to find out more about how Quensus can help you understand your water use, reduce your water bills and protect your properties from leaks.