The need for water saving has become an essential consideration for this sector around the globe.As the most water guzzling part of the home, the bathroom has come under a lot of scrutiny and the industry has been tasked with the job of reducing water flow and waste where possible - however commerciality means it cannot reduce performance. As a result an increasing number of bathroom related products feature some kind of water saving technology.
But one niggling issue has been more to do with plumbing than products - why do we flush toilets with perfectly clean drinking water? Why can't we use 'grey water', the waste from basins and baths, in the cistern?This is not an entirely new concept of course, a number of solutions have been made in the past but struggled with commercial appeal, but now a major manufacturer has come up with its own widely available attempt.
The W+W toilet and basin combination was dreamt up by the Roca Innovation Lab, part of the Roca Design Centre, together with Italian designers Gabriele and Oscar Buratti. The body is formed of a softly curved L-shape with the toilet at the lower end, and the sink located higher up for convenience.
"W+W is by far our biggest design achievement," says Josep Congost, design manager at Roca. "Our approach to design has always been to look forward and create bathroom designs and solutions for the future. W+W epitomises this approach and we feel it completely sums up our design philosophy.
"W+W is also the first commercially viable project to come out of the Roca Innovation Lab - a design hub created so that we could continue to focus on pushing design boundaries. This is a huge achievement for us and for design in general."This revolutionary product is now available in the UK market and will be taking centre stage on the Roca stand at kbb Birmingham.
Since its launch at ISH last year, the W+W has received many awards including the Wallpaper Readers' Choice Awards 2010, the International Design Plus Award 2009 - an award given to products that are outstanding in terms of their innovative concept as well as sustainability - it also won Best Eco Product and Product of the Year at the FX Awards 2009, and most recently the Best Bathroom Product Award at the Self Build Product Innovation Awards 2010 - and, most importantly of course, it is also a finalist in this year's kbbreview Industry Awards Environmental Innovation category.
Incorporating Roca's special water reuse technology, the W+W uses waste water from the basin to fill the WC cistern, and by doing so can use up to 25% less water compared to a standard 6/3 litre dual-flush WC.Its water saving credentials don't end there. The basin element is fitted with the Singles-Pro tap which features a special cartridge that always starts the flow with cold water. As the user turns the control the flow then changes to a mixture of hot and cold, this means that heating systems aren't fired up unnecessarily. The tap also includes a flow limiter that restricts the water flow to a maximum of just nine litres per minute.
Here's how it works...
The basin features two wastes - the regular basin waste and one further down the waste pipe. Once the basin has been used and filled with water the user can decide whether to divert it to the mains or to the cistern for recycling.When the grey water is selected for reuse it is prevented from flowing out to the mains at the secondary waste and is diverted to fill the cistern via a double filtration system. The filtered water is then chemically treated and is stored in the grey water reservoir and used to fill the cistern when required.The reservoir can hold up to four litres of recycled and treated water at any time, and it features an overflow so that any excess water can be discarded via the main waste outlet.If for any reason there is no grey water stored, the float recognises this and automatically fills the cistern from the mains.
Roca: Stand C35, Hall 20
