Ecological Design Consultants - Water Balance Modelling

Water Balance Modelling

We offer a service to conduct water balance modelling of your project.
The model output is used to inform decisions about sizing components and about which systems to install. For instance, the water savings achieved by installing a greywater system may result in much less water supply by an existing rainwater harvest system. We can link the results to costing estimates and water bills to assess the economic merit of different combinations of systems.

Rainwater Harvesting System

We have developed a detailed daily water balance model to inform the decisions about tank sizing, roof collection area, and usage volumes. This analysis ensures you end up with the best combination of tank size and roof collection area. For a sample summary of the output from our rainwater harvesting model click here. (pdf reader required)

The basic rainwater modelling incorporates the following features:

- daily time-step modelling over 30 years

- irrigation demand varying by month

- irrigation is conditional on recent rainfall events. (modelled on a rain sensor response)

- detailed first flush diverter modelling

Project Water Balance Modelling

Our complete water balance model includes our rainwater harvesting model together with modelling of wastewater reuse, stormwater harvesting, and borewater. The model accommodates occupancy which varies throughout the year as well as separate pool, lawn and garden usage modelling. The modelling can be used to explore what-if scenarios such as different storage size, usage options and back-up options. Treatment systems including reed beds and wetlands can be analysed to investigate potential overflows. The chart below shows a summary of simulated average monthly supply volumes to indoor uses for a development.