Call for Interested Contractors: Protecting water quality in the home (domestic fixtures & fittings)

Call for Interested Contractors: Protecting water quality in the home (domestic fixtures & fittings)

Published On 31/10/2018

A new UKWIR Project to understand the potential contribution from customers’ fixtures and fittings to the risk of lead, nickel and chromium concentrations failing drinking water standards, with a particular focus on lead.

This project forms the second project that looks at lead within UKWIR’s Big Question ‘How do we achieve 100% compliance with drinking water standards by 2050?’.

The project will build on previous UKWIR research into lead, such as project DW/15/04/16: Brass fittings as a source of lead & nickel in drinking water – long term leaching studies. What is different about this project is that it will look at fixtures and fittings, along with water quality, in a non-controlled environment, in customers’ properties. This project will help us understand the prevalence and relative contribution of lead.

As this project surveys and samples customers’ property it will be vital to get the UK and Ireland Public Health Bodies involved.

Contractor tasks to include:

  1. Undertake a statistically representative survey of customer properties and their connectivity to water service pipes to assess the types of pipes and fitting present (where visible).
  2. Take water quality samples from a range of taps within customers’ properties and analyse for a number of parameters including lead, nickel and chromium.
  3. Review the survey data and associated water quality data to understand the extent of the lead pipework within customers’ properties.
  4. Use the data from the survey and previous UKWIR projects to determine the risk to customers if the water industry were to stop phosphate dosing.
  5. Estimate the costs associated with removal of lead pipework (including fixtures and fittings) within customers’ properties to secure compliance without phosphate dosing.

For more information and to express interest in this project, please click here.

Expressions of interest in this Project close on 28 NOVEMBER 2018.