University Engineering Facilities, Sheffield

Home to the university’s engineering faculty, the highly sustainable building is home to 5,000 student study spaces, 19 teaching laboratories and six floors of flexible teaching spaces. The client worked with the UK’s leading consulting engineers to ensure their new building was not only visually impressive for engineering students but also had a reduced impact on the environment. This included reduced mains water consumption within the building.

Stormsaver worked with the team of consulting engineers to specify and design a rainwater harvesting system capable of supplying 43 WCs with a sustainable water supply. This came in the form of our Combi rainwater harvesting system which offered the mechanical and electrical contractor the simplest solution for installation and an internal break tank. The internal brake tank acts as a failsafe to ensure a water supply is always available to points of use throughout the building. All rainwater was collected from the 1980m2 roof area and stored in a below-ground 38,000-litre storage tank.

Stormsaver was also able to supply our monitoring unit which highlights water savings made from the rainwater harvesting system to building users. Collectively, the system was designed to recycle one million litres of water per year for the university.