Sewers
What is average litreage of sewage/waste water produced per peson per day?
I am trying to work out what the average litreage of waste water (inc. sewage) produced per person per day in a typical domestic home. The reason is that I have to select an appropriately sized sewage/waste water pump tank to pump waste water from new house being built up by 3 metres to connect to main sewer. On the assumption that the pumps were to fail (eg electricity failure) I would like to be able to build in a over-specification to account for this hence desire to know average waste water produced. Could anyone explain how to calculate this? It would really help if I could justify on paper my size choice rather than simply say this is the size I have selected!!!??? Thanks for any input.
Public Comments
- It is generally regarded that the average amount of water waste produced by each person in the UK is 50 litres.
- it varies - from 10 to 50litres.
- You can find those statistics on the internet, but if you find American statistics, it will be listed in gallons, not liters. There are four quarts in a gallon and a liter is 1.06 quarts, so there are a little less in four liters than it a US gallon. 50 liters has to be too small - but I judge tht from what we use over here where the toilets of new homes are 3 gallons and the existing toilets in older homes is 5 gallons. The number of times that one goes to the bathroom is a good way to tell something about septic waste. However you cannot consider that alone. How much water do you use in washing dishes and preparing food? How much water do you use in washing clothes. A front loading clothes washing machine of the newer type uses 1/4 of the water for a top loader and a top loader will use 40 gallons per wash. I realize that British washing machines are usually smaller, so determine the amount a top loader uses and if you have a front loader, find one fourth of that number. Bathing is another source of water going into sewage. Do you take long showers until the hot water is depleted? Or do you take what we called in the Navy, Navy Showers, where you turn ont he water to get wet, turn it off, and then turn it on to rinse off. Bath tubs over here would take ab out 25 gallons. Maybe forty. I have a situation here that is interesting. I have a geriatric mother in law living here who consumes 1 pint of water every 30 minutes and goes to the bathroom every 20 minutes. That means taht there is a quart (or liter) of water consumed every hour and since the toilet that she uses flushes 3 gallons, she is using 9 gallons an hour purely for elimination of the quarter of water that she consumes. Since she is up 13 hours per day, not consider the water she drinks or what she uses to wash herself, brush her teeth, and things like that, she is using a minimum of 111 gallons per day just flushing. That would be a little less than 444 liters per day just for flushing. Here is the average for one town in Arizona as determined by their statistics: Household Gallon Per Day Minimum Occupants x 30 days Monthly Usage 1 80 gpd x 30 days 2,400 gpm 2 160 gpd x 30 days 4,800 gpm 3 240 gpd x 30 days 7,200 gpm 4 320 gpd x 30 days 9,600 gpm 5 400 gpd x 30 days 12,000 gpm 6 480 gpd x 30 days 14,400 gpm 7 560 gpd x 30 days 16,800 gpm My house has a 1500 gallon septic tank and my house was designed for two adults and two children, or four people, but as you can see by my calculations including my mother in law, in a house now with only three people in it, my numbers are completly out of whack with that average. And as I stated, things depend upon what types of appliances you have, how often you use them, how you bathe, whether or not you leave the water on while washing your hands and brushing your teeth, etc. So what I assume is their is a wide standard deviation in the average water usage, maybe as much as 25+ percent depending on the conditions of a particular house.
- F I F T Y LITRES
