Problem Definition
A1: Water wastage in the shower is a common practice that many people go through every day. Wastage comes in two ways; the first one is on the overall time spent in the shower and the second one is when waiting for warm water to flow while the first cold water drains out. People usually turn on the shower and continue doing their chores until warm water streams and by the time they return both cold and hot water of substantial amount will go to waste. An estimated 20% of the total amount of water used in a shower is wasted in the US (Kuznetsov & Paulos, 2010).
A2: It is necessary to address the problem since it not only leads to water loss but also misuse of power. A well-designed solution to the problem is likely to reduce two ordinary bills at once and make other places in the continent more habitable. Assuming that a standard shower head is used, every minute wasted in the shower translates to a loss of 2.5 gallons of water. An average American family consumes about 40 gallons of water to shower which brings to about 240 billion gallons of water on waste in the shower alone in a year; water that could be used to address scarcity experienced in big cities such as Sao Paulo, Brazil. 17 % of the electricity used in an American home goes to water heating (Widen et al., 2009). Wastage of hot water, therefore, has a massive loss in the energy sector.
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A3: Coming up with a solution to the problem seems a hard nut to crack because a shower is a personal act and you cannot indeed dictate to a person on how to do. As much as time wasting is seen to be the main problem, you cannot tell people the amount of time they should be in their bathrooms. Even if necessary measures are enforced, it is impossible to follow up to check whether they are adhered to or not.
Solution to The Problem
B1: One solution that seems to address the wastage well is designing a closed-loop shower that recycles bath water right in the bathroom. The design works in a way that the water used does not flow into the drainage pipes but flows back for reuse after passing through a quick recycling system. The design means that no matter the behavior of a person, no water is wasted since it will flow back to your shower head.
B2: The system is a spot-on filtration system that aims at conserving wastage of water and also power. The filtration is designed to remove contaminants from the dirty shower water and make it clean enough to be used for another shower. It is not a complicated setting as it fits in the bathroom. There is a pumping system that enables the water to flow up again up to the shower head. The design also has a reservoir to hold already purified water. Heat conserving materials are used so that it can conserve the energy of hot water wasted making the system to be able to address the two problems at hand.
B3: Some of the limitation affecting recycling system include:
Many consumers might fail to buy the idea because they might not trust that such a simple system can fully recycle shower system.
The system is a bit expensive to purchase and install, but that is only on the initial cost.
Many consumers do not realize the economic loss of water wastage and are therefore not in a hurry to fix it.
B4: The filtration unit is economical in that it reduces the amount of energy consumed by 80% and this is due to having to heat a few amounts of water per person. Once a single person has been in the shower, the hot water that he/she used will be used by the second person without the use of energy. The solution is not only aimed at reducing personal bills but also saving scarce resources in the continent. When one person saves a gallon of water, that water will benefit another human being in some other place. Water shortage is a problem that a forecasted 3.5 billion people can face in the next decade (Kummu et al., 2010).
The Design Process
C1: One crucial information learned during background research is that wastage of water in the shower is a problem experienced by many people yet most of them do not see its implication. Unless it is explained well to people, many may not figure out that about 17% of their electricity bills goes to water heating alone. Quantifying the problem in the form of financial loss, however, makes people realize it and become more willing to change the situation.
C2: Possible solutions include:
Using a shower head that has a lower flow rate than the ones being used at the moment.
Using a flexible shower head that can be moved such that water can be directed to any part of the body to reduce the time taken in the shower.
Use of copper wires to minimize the energy lost by hot water down the drain. Clean cold water in copper wires is passed through the already warm dirty water to claim back the heat.
Advising consumers to take the shortest time possible in the shower.
C3: Use of a self-recycling shower is the most viable solution for others because it addresses both loss of heat and also wastage of cold water. All the other solutions seem to reduce the problem by a small percentage, but the chosen one reduces significantly, by over 80%. Furthermore, the selected solution is not tied to consumer’s behavior like the other ways. This means that given that the system works, adherence by consumers will not be an issue.
C4: A challenge that was overcome is getting people to see the economic loss brought about by the problem. Many people admitted that they normally participate in water wastage behavior but had not quantified the damage it brought them and the world in general. Another challenge was convincing people on why the equipment would be a bit expensive. Explaining the long-term financial gain helped to overcome the challenge.
C5: The selected solution was tested against another solution of using a water head with a lower rate of flow assuming a consumer obeys other suggested solutions such as reducing time wastage. The first test involved measuring the amount of water conserved when the flow rate of a showerhead is reduced by a half a gallon per minute. The second test conducted was on measuring the amount of water conserved in a single shower using the self-recycling shower system.
C6: The modifications needed to improve the solution was the use of a bit cheaper material to build the recycling system so that it becomes affordable to many people.
D: Engineering design method and scientific method differ in the following areas:
In the scientific method, a problem is initiated with a question with the aim of explaining a particular occurrence whereas, in engineering design, a problem is first defined with the objective of finding a solution to it.
The scientific method has a hypothesis which is the basis for concluding whereas the engineering design has specified requirements for a valid solution.
The scientific method goes on to test the hypothesis using an experiment while for engineering design, a brainstorm of possible solutions is done and then the best solution is selected.
References
Kummu, M., Ward, P. J., de Moel, H., & Varis, O. (2010). Is physical water scarcity a new phenomenon? Global assessment of water shortage over the last two millennia. Environmental Research Letters, 5(3), 034006.
Kuznetsov & Paulos (2010, April). UpStream: motivating water conservation with low-cost water flow sensing and persuasive displays. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1851-1860). ACM.
Widén, J., Lundh, M., Vassileva, I., Dahlquist, E., Ellegård, K., & Wäckelgård, E. (2009). Constructing load profiles for household electricity and hot water from time-use data—Modelling approach and validation. Energy and Buildings, 41(7), 753-768.
