Rainwater Harvesting for Schools, Universities & Colleges

Most schools, colleges and universities are specified with either a Combi or a non-pressurised system.

Combi is Stormsaver’s most-specified commercial product and the right fit for the majority of education buildings: a hybrid system that combines the reliability of a header-tank design with the pressurised delivery of a boosted system, housed in a pre-wired, pre-tested unit with an internal buffer tank of 225, 400 or 620 litres. It’s suited to sites where peak demand sits at or below 620 litres an hour, which covers most schools and colleges.

Where a campus has a larger, more concentrated demand, a big secondary school, college or university building with heavy toilet use across the day, a non-pressurised system is the better fit, gravity-feeding water to point of use from a break tank that can be sited at any level in the building.

A water supply interruption in a school or lecture building isn’t a minor inconvenience; it can mean toilets out of action for hundreds of pupils or students with nowhere else to go. Stormsaver systems are built with that in mind:

• Automatic mains-water backup keeps washrooms running through dry spells or a component fault, switching in without any need for on-site intervention.
• Mechanical ball valves on the break-tank inlets, rather than solenoid valves alone. This prevents the failure mode where a stuck-open solenoid lets mains water run continuously until the next service visit, which can otherwise leave a site with a large, unexpected water bill.
• Mains-water protection, with automatic shut-off and alerts, to catch a fault before it becomes a cost problem.
• Legionella safeguards built into the design: a nightly mains-water flush prevents stagnation and break tanks are sited to avoid elevated water temperatures.

Education is the one sector where the system itself becomes part of the teaching. Stormsaver’s Rainwater Harvesting Monitoring System is a wall-mounted digital display, typically sited in a reception area or atrium, that pulls live water and carbon-saving data directly from the system’s control panel over a single ethernet connection, a simple installation with minimal cabling. It can be branded with the school or university’s own logo.

Rainwater harvesting systems normally sit out of sight in a plant room, so the savings they generate go unnoticed by the people benefiting from them. In a school or university, that’s a missed opportunity: put the numbers on a screen where pupils and students walk past every day and the installation becomes a live, ongoing sustainability lesson rather than a piece of hidden infrastructure.

Given the number of people using the building and the standard of water quality expected, UV disinfection is commonly specified on education sites, alongside irrigation and any vehicle-washing applications where a fine vapour or spray is produced.

Where UV is specified, it needs a partner: an automatic backwash filter, providing a third stage of filtration ahead of the break tank. Without it, suspended particles in the water can shield microorganisms from the UV light, an effect known as UV shadowing, which reduces how effectively the system disinfects. Stormsaver’s automatic backwash filter is rated to 35 microns, self-cleans by reversing the flow to drain when the control panel detects a pressure drop and is tested to a million backwash cycles. It also protects downstream components from commissioning debris and reduces the risk of failure from small particulates.

All Stormsaver commercial systems are designed to this standard, the UK reference for on-site non-potable water systems. Sizing runs two calculations: the roof’s realistic rainwater yield and the building’s actual non-potable demand and adopts the smaller of the two.

Most new-build and major refurbishment education projects are assessed against BREEAM and water consumption (Wat 01) is a credit category where rainwater harvesting does reliable, predictable work. Under BRE’s Wat 01 methodology, meeting up to 75% of non-potable demand with recycled or harvested water earns 5 credits, with an additional exemplary credit available at 95%. Because toilet flushing needs no behaviour change from occupants, it’s a dependable route to those credits rather than one reliant on how people use the building.

DEFRA published new National Standards for Sustainable Drainage Systems in June 2025, applying to major developments. Under the revised runoff-destination hierarchy, collecting rainwater for non-potable reuse now sits at the top. The standards remain non-statutory in England, enforced through planning conditions rather than a separate approval regime, but the direction is clear: rainwater harvesting is increasingly the expected first answer to surface water on new campus buildings, not an optional add-on.

The Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy commits every education setting to nominate a sustainability lead and put a climate action plan in place, working towards a 50% reduction in public sector emissions by 2032. Universities across the UK have made their own net-zero commitments with published target dates, adding water stewardship to the list of metrics reported to students, staff and investors. For bursars and business managers, there’s a simpler driver alongside all of this: rising water and wastewater charges make a free, on-site resource increasingly hard to ignore.