Message
Duncan,
I personally have not come across such a valuable tool and would be very interested to hear from anyone who has. Some years back, the International Hotels Environment Initiative (IHEI) published their"Environmental Management for Hotels" in which was included some useful information on water consumption. Intercontinental Hotels (As they were then) - at that time had done some interesting work on water consumption and kindly shared the information with IHEI members. They came up with statistics on amount of water used in 200-1000 bedroomed hotels and, after taking many variables into consideration, concluded that guestrooms accounted for 750 litres per occupied room per day. (37%). Kitchens 21%, public toilets 17% and so on. They also concluded that water heating accounted for 15% of their energy bill, so there is some information on which to base educated guesses, but, in truth, there are so many variables that it is unlikely that one can produce anything other than a very rough rule of thumb. To make solar energy pay one needs to know how much water is used and the pattern of consumption. If the demand is throughout the day - as in a Motorway Service Station for example, solar will be more beneficial than in a commercial hotel, where maximum demand is likely to be early morning and late afternoon but nothing in between. Yet another variable to consider. The early (and incomplete) field trials I was involved with, showed that the pay-back in Little Chefs would be much faster than in commercial hotels. Sorry I cannot help you further!

Posted By
John Forte on 29/6/2006