The Hidden Truth About Water Waste — and What One Founder Did About It - Building The Dream

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Building the Dream, a podcast brought to
you by Aura Surfaces.
Today I'm sat with Steve Now.
Steve has a very interestingstory and is the founder of
Showercap.
Now, I'm not going to tell youtoo much about it because I want
you to listen to the episode,but this is a very, very
important topic that we'redealing with at the moment.

(00:21):
So, without further ado,welcome Steve Harding, the
founder of Showercap, toBuilding the Dream.
How are you doing, steve?
I'm doing very well, ash.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good good.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I want to start with a couple of things.
The conversation why water?
The hard-hitting truth is SouthEast Water recently pumped 680
million litres in a single dayand they still couldn't meet the
demand.
That's nearly a billion litresmore in just two weeks, compared
to June 2022.

(00:53):
Why do you think people arestill unaware that water
scarcity is no longer a distantproblem?
It's here and in the UK.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Oh hey, that's quite difficult because up until three
, four years ago I wasn't awareof the problem.
There's a lot of stuff thatcomes out on you know, don't,
don't run your tap when youclean your teeth, don't.
You know, don't do this, don'tdo that.
But that's been around for along time and nobody's really
talking about how big theproblem is.

(01:24):
Yeah, why is that?
I don't know.
Possibly because it's a blamegame.
You know, if water companiessay you know we've got to save X
, everyone else says yeah, butyou're wasting Y.
So it's a really difficult onebecause nobody wants to point a
finger.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
And I feel this in a lot of areas of the world we
live in Everybody's findingsomeone to blame instead of all
coming together and solving aproblem yeah, I think that's.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I mean, that's true of everything which is going on
at the moment.
We're going through this, thiswhole cycle of what they call
you know, your circular economy,if you want to put it like that
.
Um, we've had a throwawaysociety for quite a few years
now, and I think people arestarting to take notice of that.
Um, even why good manufacturershave to manufacture things that
can be repaired now where theyweren't.

(02:11):
Um, because people understandwe haven't got a finite resource
.
You know they're diggingminerals out of ground.
Well, what happens when there'sno more?
Um, so you've got all of thatside of it and people are doing
this, but nobody's reallythinking about water, and that's
.
There's no more.
So you've got all of that sideof it and people are doing this,
but nobody's really thinkingabout water, and that's.
There's only one water.
You know you've got varioussources of energy.

(02:32):
You've got various things youcan adapt to.
We've only got one water and Ithink what's really happened is
we've got out of sync withnature.
Basically, we're using morethan the system is replenishing.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
We're seeing a massive building boom 71,000 new
homes every year in the SouthEast alone, all needing water.
How realistic do you feel it isto keep relying on the old
reservoirs and the leaky pipes?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
No one can build in the South East or Cambridge or
anything without waterneutrality.
The builders need water creditsto build, yet there's not
enough being done to address use.
So how do you get those credits?
Because it's local.
It's not like carbon creditswhich can be greenwashed.
You can sell those to someonewho's spending a load of carbon,

(03:25):
and that's global.
It floats around the world.
It's global.
Water is very local.
You draw it from the reservoirs, you draw it from underground,
from the aquifers, and it'sfinite Once it's gone.
It's gone.
So you can't build 71,000houses a year, but we can't

(03:47):
supply them.
Yeah.
What's coming out from thegovernment recently is by 2055,
we're going to be X many billionlitres a day in deficit, when
actually it's happening now?
Why aren't they saying that?
Why aren't they saying we mighthave to turn your taps off?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Again, this comes back to mesort of they're frightened too,

(04:09):
because if they say somethingit's almost politics.
They don't want to saysomething because somebody else
will come back and fire anotherone at them and it would just be
this baton ball of who's toblame.
Yeah, again, pointing thefinger.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Pointing the finger yeah, pointing the finger.
Pointing the finger who I mean?
Kirsten, means I don't reallywant to get into politics.
No, I I try and skirt that, butI mean some of the post he's
saying about we've got to buildthis many houses, we've got to
do this, we've got to do this.
But they're not talking aboutthe infrastructure and that's
not just down to the roads andthe schools and the doctor,
surgeries and stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
That is down to the water and where we get it from
it's, it's the water, and Ithink the more, the more
pressing, and I'm starting toraise the awareness of what
happens to that water onceyou've used it, once it's gone
down the drain, because it goesto the treatment plants and they
can't cope.
So our rivers and our seas aregetting discharged of sewage,

(05:02):
yeah, and it's not just when itrains, it's happening almost
daily yeah and that's justbecause of the way we're now
using and consuming water,wasting it effectively yeah um,
and it all ends up there.
You don't realize this an issuebecause you don't associate it
with it.
You don't associate thateverything goes down the plug

(05:23):
hole, everything goes down yourdrain ends up at the treatment
plant and it's just notseparating the water from the
mucky stuff.
It's all the same thing yeah soit's not just building a
reservoir because they've got tobuild massive treatment plants
to cope with the sewage?
Yeah, so where's that beingspoken about, and who wants that

(05:46):
in their backyard?

Speaker 1 (05:47):
It's all good and well-promised in these things,
but you need a real plan of howyou're going to achieve that.
But another question, or it'ssort of a fact, but shower and
bath in account for 36% of waterused in the home and 26.6% of
household energy.
They're huge numbers.

(06:08):
What do you think anybodylistening to this now is the top
three things that they shoulddo to do their bit to help save
water?
What would you say?
Obviously, teenagers in theshower spending 25 minutes.
I've got one, yeah.
Um, my seven-year-old daughtersaid she was watching me brush

(06:30):
my teeth and you're gonna hateme for this, daddy, when you're
brushing, turn the tap off untilyou need it again.
And she's seven, so that'squite good.
That's quite good not good onmy part, but good on her part.
So what do you think?
What's the top three thingsthat people could be doing to
help do their bit?

Speaker 2 (06:50):
I think you know the shower is one of the big ones
Toilets, also Understanding whatis the short and what is the
long flush, because up until Idid this, and recently until I
put the shower cap monitoringsystem in my home, my kids,

(07:10):
young adults they're not kids um, thought the two buttons were
just aesthetic.
I didn't know.
The little one used half asmuch water as the big one, um.
So there's this, little thingslike that and toilet flushing.
Oh, we've had, you have a wee,just don't flush it, it doesn't
have to be flushed away.
Yeah, but I think the mainthing that I was amazed at and

(07:32):
because it's not measured isthat showers, especially if
you've got a pressurised watersystem, you're using up to 15
litres a minute down the shower.
So you know, 10 minutes, 150it's, it's huge volumes of water
.
Yeah.
So people, this fantasy of, oh,don't have a bath, have a
shower, yeah, fine, have a threeminute shower, four minute

(07:54):
shower, that's good, but have a10 minute show.
You should have had a bath yeahbecause there's not an
association and because wehaven't got any way of measuring
, that it's become almost a normMassive, great, big shower
heads and these high-pressureshower systems.
They're all driven by the majorbrands.

(08:14):
You know we can do a bigger,better, faster.
You know Faster.
More water, yeah, more water.
And even if you go into thesepressurised hot water systems, I
mean I don't yeah, I name it,names, but you know Megaflow,
that says it all, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 (08:29):
I mean you know it can supply a vast amount of
water, and it's not evenpressure, is it?

Speaker 2 (08:36):
It's the volume of water that they're providing,
yeah, but you know it's thevolume, yeah, and then you and
then flipping off of that combiboilers.
They have improved so much overthe last 20 years, whereas they
used to not really supply adecent amount of water.
Now they can.

(08:56):
And it's estimated because youcan't actually get stats on it,
but over a million are put in ayear, so that's a million.
Combi boilers, that's a millionsystems that in a year, so
that's a million.
Combi borders, that's a millionsystems that never run out of
hot water yeah so the teenagecould sit in a shower for 40
minutes and it would never runout.
Yeah, so we've lost thatassociation with I don't know.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
I suppose how precious it is well, and that's
that's a good point.
I didn't even think of thatbecause back I remember when we
had you had the hot watercylinder and the thing right,
all four of us need to shower.
Everybody's got to.
You've got to limit it,otherwise someone's having a
cold shower and you have to havethat cold shower to realise, oh

(09:39):
shit, everybody needs to right.
Next time I'm not going to havea 10 minute shower because
everyone's got to use it and Iwas last, and that's a good
point.
Actually, that's a very validpoint.
I didn't even think of that youknow, this is what's happened.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Um, it's just, it's the availability, it's, it's
almost.
Um, you just don't think aboutit, because it's this, it's just
this resource that comes out.
It's, it's just this resourcethat comes out, it's whole
resources flows.
Yeah, and there's no thoughtprocess.
Yeah.
And I'm not saying it'sanyone's fault, because I'm as
guilty as anybody yeah.
You know, it's just the waythings have evolved in the

(10:23):
richer countries in thedeveloped world.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Totally different if you go, you know to a third
world country and they're reallysavouring every bit of drinking
water that they can get.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, well, I think if you look at it there's some
stats.
I don't do stats very well, Idon't retain stats, I tend to do
more of the overview and I tryand drill down to where the core
problem is.
But we use I think it's roughlyabout 150 litres per head.
Might be 145 per head in the UKper day, America 257 really

(10:58):
furball country 4 litres yeahand it's not just water, it's
everything.
We're over consuming everything.
We you know the richercountries are consuming more
than the earth can produce in ashorter space of time.
I did a leadership piece alittle while ago and the uk hit
their yearly consumptionsometime back a few weeks ago

(11:22):
now.
Now, everything from then on,you're drawing resource out of
the ground or out the earthwhich should be there for future
.
So all the time you'reconsuming more than it can give
back.
It's a one-way ticket, you knowwe just you know it doesn't
take Einstein to work out whatthe end result's going to be.
Yeah, you know it doesn't takeEinstein to work out what the
end result's going to be.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, and I go back to being a kid and going to
Ardenlight Reservoir, which isobviously a beautiful place,
yeah, and I think in all thosetimes we used to have a dog, so
we used to go there quite a lotand I remember one summer it was
bare, it was really, and therewas only one summer as a kid.

(12:03):
Now we've had nice weather forthe last few weeks and there's
talks of hosepipe bans becausethey're running out of water.
Is that down to do?
You think?
Is that down to a mixture of amultitude of things, whereas
we're using a hell of a lot morebut also we're not retaining it

(12:23):
and like, like you said, we'renot recycling it, we're not
repurposing it.
We've got an extra 50,000houses built over the last few
years.
Is it just a mixture ofeverything put together?

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, I think it's a compounding effect.
I mean, I think you know again,we don't want to blame anybody,
no, but obviously what you'renot seeing is also the water
table under the ground.
You know we're depleting that.
We're not depleting it in theUK as much as other countries
are, but you know you've got thesurface water and then you've
got your aquifers underneath,which are being depleted as well

(12:56):
.
So that's hidden.
And I think there's thiscombination of things Nobody's
got an overview of.
No one's joining the dots,nobody's taking responsibility.
You're joining the dots and youget governments in and they're
in for whatever their term, butthere's no continuity, yeah,

(13:21):
when it comes to something likethis.
So everybody has their ownopinion.
That was, but it's.
It's something that they shouldbe able to look at and project
and go.
We can't supply this yeah unlesswe do this, this and this.
But actually what I'm sayingand what I'm advocating and what
we've got to do as a ashumanity, is actually to reduce

(13:45):
what we're using.
We don't need to be using thatmuch water, yeah we only need
three or four liters a day tosurvive.
It's not a need.
So you've got to move needsfrom greed.
Everyone's got to be a bitmindful about what they're doing
.
Yeah, and the same with waterconsumption.
You why Just having somethingthere to remind you that
actually, oh yeah, I've hit mytarget, you know I've done what

(14:08):
I was doing, yeah, and actuallybring it home.
Yeah.
And I think that's across theboard.
I mean, we're talking.
I'm not going to save the worldby saving water.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
But it's a step.
It's a step and you can do.
I feel that.
What when we'll dig into showercap in a minute?
But I feel that what you'vedone with shower cap is
educating.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
It's about educating people on what you can, the
little things that you can do todo your part to help and save
yeah, I think, going back towhen I renovated the property
which you help with, you know weput, yeah, the tiles and
everything in there.
We put an en suite on the twogirls bedrooms.

(14:53):
So, yeah, teenage girls, two ensuites.
You know we had family bathroomfor servicing one and a half
kids and then we had ourbathroom.
So you're you're providing ameans, in effect, to to compound
the problem.
Um, and we were using on in ourproperty averaging 800 liters a

(15:15):
day.
Now, to me that wasextortionate, but when you, when
you think there was five of us,potentially 5.5, because my
daughter was coming in when youbreak that down it's actually
not too mad, but I thought itwas horrendous.
And before I even thought abouta shower cabin, before the

(15:37):
pandemic I was checking ourmeter to see if it was running
when no one was at home, to seeif I'd leaked.
Now we'd replaced all of thefees into a house so it
shouldn't have had a leak and wedidn't have a leak so we were
using that.
So next thing I did, I got upin the loft and I put all the
restrictor valves on all of theshower outlets and I choked them

(15:59):
down a bit and it didn't make agreat deal of difference.
No, and it didn't make a greatdeal of difference.
No, it didn't make a great dealof difference.
And this is where this is theonly tool available to the
hotels, the universities and allthat.
What they're doing is they'rechoking the delivery, so they're
restricting the flow to chokethe delivery, and that's great.

(16:22):
If you go from 10 litres to 8litres, theoretically you've
saved 20%.
Yeah.
But that's only true if thatperson then stays in that shell
for the same length of time.
If you've now made it harder towash your hair out, for
argument's sake, get the soapout of it and you stay in there
for another 10 minutes.
Actually, you've used morewater.

(16:42):
Yeah.
So there's nothing to measurethat at the moment, and that was
something else that I I waskeen to do is to try and say
look you, if you can't changesomething, this you can measure
it.
If you can measure it, you canactually appreciate what you're
doing.
And you're right, it's abouteducation, it's about
enlightening people I was at anevent in london.

(17:02):
Actually I was on a panel and Imet a really interesting lady
over lunch.
We were just standing theretalking and she came.
Her family were from India.
They were in a remote part, norunning water, and she remembers
as a child, before she went toschool, the thing she had to do
was to go to a well and collectwater for the day.
So that's obviously donkey'syears ago.

(17:24):
They've moved to the uk, as isher family, but her husband's
family is still there and wewere just talking and she's
really interested and she wassaying I really love her long
shower, I said, but when I gohome, they have a bowl on the
floor and that's what everyonehas to use to wash and
everything like that, and.
But you get and you adapt.
And she doesn't think twiceabout it.

(17:46):
She just does it and you adaptand I think it is coming back to
availability.
It's opulence, it's there andit's just accepted.
It's there.
So going to having a standpipeor something like that for a few
weeks and then it raining andeverything.
Oh yeah, I think it'shunky-dory again now and
everyone just go back to theirtheir normal way.

(18:07):
It's nature, it's just anatural thing to do.
And even she said I've neverthought about that.
Yeah, I never thought why am Iaccepting that I can have a long
shower here?
Yeah, yeah, I completely accept.
When I go home, I've just got abowl of water on the floor and
it's really difficult toactually get your head around

(18:29):
that.
What I'm trying to do is supplysome tools to enable people to
actually think about that andunderstand.
That's what it is you know butit's a big shift because it's
not been done before.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
No one's ever measured water like we're
measuring water yeah, and that'sa perfect opportunity to talk
about the birth of shower cap.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah well, I was just saying I said from from the,
from the realization, but we'reusing 800 liters late averaging.
Um, water's not expensive.
Water's really cheap.
No matter put it up 30%, it'sreally cheap.
Considering without it you die.
It's really cheap, it's a musthave, which is why it's cheap.

(19:18):
Because it's in Ireland, theydon't charge.
I think they've just started tobring that in.
Don't charge for water becausethey believe it's in Ireland,
but I'm charged.
I think they've just started tobring that in.
Yeah, don't charge for waterbecause they believe it's a
basic human need.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
Human yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
So we had that.
So during the pandemic, stuckat home as everyone was all the
kids back from uni and what haveyou, and just listening to
torrents of water above ourkitchen area because you know
we've got two showers sittingabove us and going on for ages
and ages and you start torealise.

(19:53):
You know A it was annoying.
But also we were having coldshowers and we've got a tank
which we've got to have 300litres of hot water in that tank
.
You know that's a lot of water.
And one, you know, our, myoldest stepdaughter, she, she
was shit awful, she would be inthere and you know if anyone

(20:14):
wants to take any credit forshower cabbage frayer, because
she got me on this and we werebanging on all.
My wife was up there bangingout a shower, you know, and
she'd run out of hot water andshe'd come out quite sheepishly.
So I'm thinking, okay,psychologically, what can I do?
How can I do something whichactually makes people not turn

(20:36):
it off, not turn it cold,because some people would do
that as a parent, you're goingand shut off the hot, yeah, yeah
.
And all of a sudden, yeah, it'sblasted cold water on someone.
All you're going to do iscreate mayhem, yeah.
So you're trying to think ofhow can we go back, because you
can't take stuff away frompeople, we can't go like we can

(20:59):
have a tin bath in the kitchenand we're all going to shit our
butts.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, exactly, we'll put an outside toilet.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Now you in the garden yeah, exactly, we'll put an
outside toilet.
Yeah, now you'll realize howprecious things are.
Yeah, so you can't revert backto how it was.
But you're trying to think,well, how can, how can we do
something?
And I was thinking if I couldsimulate that, if I could
simulate the effect of themrunning out of water before it
actually did run out,psychologically they're going to
come out a bit sheepish becauseI've used all the hot water,

(21:30):
yeah, and it it's a very gradualfade, so it's not.
It's not as though you can'tfinish what you're doing.
And even at the end of a fade,the temperature is still only
about 35, 34 degrees so it's notcold yeah it.
You know you could carry onshowering if you wanted to, but
you wouldn't stay in it.
But you wouldn't because it'snot yeah.
No, and that's really where mythought process went, and it

(21:53):
took a couple of years afterthat 22, but I sort of I said to
Nicola, my wife, I said youknow, I've got this idea.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
So had this been playing on your mind?

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, I've been rolling and rolling with it,
trying to think how can you turnback the clock?
I had no clue, but it was 70%,mid-80s to now, an uplift of all
to use, and there were multiplereasons for that, but
predominantly I knew it had goneup now.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah, you know, an uplift of all to use and there
are multiple reasons for that,but you know predominantly.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
I knew it gone up because I know as a child we
never used that much yeah so youknow that's happening, and if
that's happening in my home,that's happening everywhere, and
it wasn't until I put the paintin because I couldn't talk to
anybody.
Nicola knew about it, none ofthe kids knew about it, so I had

(22:48):
to then do some sketches, comeup with a means of doing it.
Yeah, luckily from mybackground, because that's what
I'm an engineer.
So I sort of came up with anidea.
I was thinking, well, how can Icontrol this?
And I was thinking about lightson a car.
You know dipped and you canadjust them.
So it's a stepper motor, or?

(23:10):
something.
Okay, if I put a stepper motoron, I can count the steps, I can
control the movement.
So I came up with a theory,came up, wrote the scope, sent
it to a paint attorney and wecame up with the paint and we
put it in.
And we did searches, globalsearches, and I was really quite

(23:31):
surprised that nobody had comeup with a controlled depletion
of hot water over time.
There's some systems out therethat do step depletions.
They just sort of turn off avalve and it'll drop, so it's
quite a rapid drop.
There's another one out therethat will squirt off a valve and
it'll drop, so it's quite arapid drop.
Or there's another one outthere but squirt cold water and
it'll carry on.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
yeah, so there's like a warning, I guess.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
Right, you've been in the shower now for four minutes
yeah, and you just squirt a bitof cold water on you so you get
a shot, but then it wouldrevert back and carry on.
Yeah, you know there's others.
You know there's other thingsout there, you know egg timers
on the wall and things like that, anything which hasn't got a
sensory nudge.
To be perfectly honest, itdoesn't.
If it worked, we wouldn't bewhere we are.

(24:14):
If anyone had come up withsomething that worked, we
wouldn't be having thisconversation.
The issue we're faced with nowis you need it everywhere?
It's how do you scale thisthing to make that?
The issue we're faced with nowis you need it everywhere?
It's how do you scale thisthing to make that difference?
And the other factor that I hadwith Freya she was at uni and
she confessed once I knew thepatent was in and I could talk

(24:37):
to someone.
I spoke to her about it and Isaid why I came up with this
idea.
And it was her that instilledit.
I sort of said to her do you go?
Is the shower a safe place foryou?
And she said no, but once she'sin there, she's cocooned, she
doesn't want to come out.
It's a sensory thing.
It's safe, your door's locked,you're in there.
So basically again, stay inthere until you sort of hop or

(25:02):
drop.
And she said she was doing thatat uni.
Yeah, she had a little en suitein her room and she would
literally sit or stand in theshower until it ran out of water
.
Yeah, um, which got me thinking, because if that's the case and
we've got a system which whichis mapping everybody and we put
on data collection so you cansee your traits, actually you

(25:25):
could identify potentialvulnerable young adults.
So, then you've got theopportunity for that institution
to put some safeguarding in toactually go and talk to those
kids, because I had a long chatwith Surrey University and
they're looking at putting thisin and it's shocking when
they're putting what they calljail showers.

(25:46):
They're putting in theseshowers that don't have a shower
head protruding.
It's embedded in the actualthing and and it's shocking when
they're doing that, so thestudent hasn't got anywhere to
hang themselves.
Wow, and the government won'tissue statistics on how many
suicides happen in universities.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Jesus, yeah, they're putting in, they're putting this
, this stuff in to prevent thatfrom happening in that
environment, so it's as much ofa problem that the universities
are having to step in, but noone knows about it no one knows
about it knows about it.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
They won't issue statistics on it.
Safeguarding was another majorthing that I feel.
The system offers that sort ofenvironment plus saving a shed
load of money.
So there was a lot of emotivereasons behind it as well and,

(26:45):
yeah, it's evolved from thatreally.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, so from my knowledge, shower cap is a valve
and it's also linked to anapplication, so is that right?

Speaker 2 (26:58):
It started off just being a bit of a shower valve.
Yeah, that was the mechanicalway, a cheap way of me gaining
control of the whole.
To feed to a shower valve.
Yeah, that was the mechanicalway, a cheap way of me um,
gaining control of the hot waterfeed to a shower.
So it's a firm, static,controlled shower and you know,
the hot water is mixed in thatfirm, static, controlled shower
with cold and you've got anoutput.
So, for example, say, say, theoutput temperature is 40 degrees

(27:20):
, so that's happening at theshower head.
Our intervention is downstreamof that and all we're doing is
it's just a mixer valve,effectively, but we're
controlling it because we've gotsensors, so flow meters and
thermal couples linked with that, so we can then control the
temperature of the water thenfeeding into the hot.
So by after a length of timewhichever set either off a for

(27:46):
mobile apple we will takecontrol of that hot water
temperature and we'll bring itdown to about 40 degrees yeah
and then after that we know.
Then we don't know what theoutput temperature of our shower
is because we don't know whatI've got it set to.
But we know it's not going to bea lot more than 40 42 degrees
so we bring, we start deliveringhot water to that shower, so to
say, a controlled shower atthat temperature, yeah.

(28:08):
And then once we reach theshower time whether it's five
minutes, six minutes, whateverit might be very gradually we
start to reduce that hot watertemperature and it's over about
40 seconds and it's onlydropping by sort of half a
degree of time.
It's very gradual and it justfades it and that's.
That's the valve on the on theplate, and I also paint.

(28:31):
I painted the depletion of hotwater over time.
So if you were aqua laser oranybody else, with a with a, a
digital shower.
You could do this, yeah, butthey'd have to license it,
because I've I've patented theactual fade, not the valve.
I haven't painted a valve, thevalve is a valve.
Anyone could take that valve,reverse engineer it, make a

(28:54):
little change, and they've gotthat.
It's not the valve, I'vepainted it's it's, it's the fade
okay so we've got that.
But when we started, when Istarted looking at that, we
started looking at the controlof it.
To put it in a big buildingyou'd need this sort of what I'd
call smart box and it needs totalk to all the others.
So you've got a hotel with 200rooms.
You'd have 200 of these devicesand then each one effectively

(29:20):
has got a smart meter andthey're all talking to each
other other and they're sendingthat information up to the cloud
.
So if you've got control likethat, you thought, well, we'll
just put a sensor, so a flowmeter and a foam cup on hot,
total hot in total cold in.
So now not only have we gotcontrol of the shower, we know
every all the water that goesinto that room, yeah, and we can

(29:42):
identify short flush, longflush, toilet, we can identify
bath, we can identify sink.
So you've now got a fullmapping of what's going on.
Now, ethically, you go.
You can't really be watchingsomeone you know, in their
bathroom.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
So we lag that an hour.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
We don't, we don't provide that information to
anyone who's monitoring life.
Yeah.
But what you're able to do thenis we can get statistics off
and it will say what the ratioof long flush to short flush
toilets are.
Yeah, and you'll be amazed athow much more water is used, and
the ratio should be probablyfour to one, if I'm being honest

(30:24):
you know from they're not, yeah, yeah.
So then you can start puttinglittle nudges in the room,
whatever they're saying, do yourealise?
And then if people start toadopt that then you can start
putting some figures back in,say, you know, with your help,
you realise we've saved athousand litres a week.
Or whatever it might be, so youcan start engaging with people,

(30:47):
and I think that's really thekey.
It's not education, it's justinformation, it's allowing
someone to feel good about it.
You know, you know we're doingthe right thing here.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, I guess as well , with sustainability in
everything, such a key thing atthe moment sustainable energy,
sustainable plastics we can'thave plastic straws, et cetera.
We've got to be sustainable.
This should be taken asseriously as that.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
I think my hope is and this was always my hope is
that if we can put this intouniversities, we can gamify it,
because um colorado stateuniversity will do the marketing
campaign on our kit, on what wewere doing, and they canvassed
everybody there and it was yeah,I don't really want you to
monitor or change my shower, butwhat do I get out of it?

(31:43):
And if you can reverse it, soyou give people something back.
So if they want a mobile app orwhatever and you've got a
target say, if you can maintainthis level of use per day over a
week, you'll get a QR codewhich says you can go into I
don't know, your localMcDonald's or whatever or coffee

(32:05):
shop and get a free coffee.
It gives something back and sothey're getting something for it
.
Because the thing is withuniversities, the students
aren't paying for that water,they're paying for their rooms,
so there's no incentive, butthen that's true of anyone
living within somebody else'shome.
There's no incentivefinancially for do it.

(32:26):
Yeah, and even then, you know,when you think financial sort of
incentives, the bill comes inonce a year.
You can forget about it tillthe next one comes in.
Really, yeah, um, so it'strying to work out a way of of
engaging, but in a in a friendlyway yeah, yeah, and not
imposing something on somebodyyeah yeah, um, and really that

(32:48):
that's.
That's the hope.
The hope is that once you dothat and you engage with those,
those young adults they rememberit.
But also, if they startthinking about water, maybe
they'll start thinking aboutother things yeah, but it's,
it's happening, you know thisresell of old clothes and all
this recycling.
It's not, it's about usingthings, it's about you know,

(33:11):
it's always this adage, isn't it?
One person's waste is somebodyelse's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I think we've just got toget back into it saying, okay,
don't just throw stuff awaybecause somebody else will want
that stuff away because somebodyelse will want that.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Do you think it's important to give, like this
information that you've got?
Do you think it's important togive this to the younger
generation?
Do you think it's reallyimportant?
And I that that's what I sortof see with this is I would be
quite interested to know howmuch water is being used not to
turn it off, not to say we can'tshower.
If you, if you need to wash yourhair and you've got a lot of
hair and you want to wash it andcondition it, etc.

(33:48):
You might need slightly longer,but I'm actually really
interested to see.
I would be very interested tounderstand what is used in the
water and why our bill should bedouble what they recommend the
average should be, and that'sinformation that I'd quite like
to know.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
I think you do what I did.
If you've got a meter out onthe road when I was at home,
you'd go and watch that meterand if it's moving you've got a
leak.
But there's always that yourfirst thought is there must be a
leak and that's a leak pastyour meter, so it's between your
house and you.
They want to roll out smartmeters.
This is what the governmentbelieve is going to make a big

(34:28):
difference is to roll out smartmetering.
Um, and in a way, potentiallysome people might.
But then we've a lot.
Of us have already got smartelectric meters, but mine's in
my garage.
I don't look at it because Ican't.
You know we've all got LEDlights now.
We've all.
You know.
The reduction on energy use hascome down a lot and it's, but

(34:51):
the bills haven't.
Funny enough, my bills arepredominantly.
A lot, especially in the wintermonths, is heating water.
Yeah, you know, because we'vedone all the things.
You know all the lights are LED.
So you know, all the lights areLED, so we're not drawing off a
huge amount on anything else.
So there is this big thing.
But, yeah, you're right, we'vegot to come up with an app, with

(35:14):
a mobile app which gives back.
No one's going to download anapp just to have a control of a
shower.
You know, it's got to besomething.
Ultimately, the ultimate wouldbe that that's got your
credentials, that's your, yourauto footprint, on that app.
So if you go anywhere, that'sgot a shower cap system.

(35:34):
Yeah, um, whether it be the gym, whether it be you know, you
know hotels around the world, orwhether it be whatever you're
doing, if you can go somewhere,that and and you just they know
it's you instantly adopts yourcredentials.
So it will set you shout on towhat you want, the fade profile
to what you want yeah and alsothen you accredit.
You're getting those credits,you're getting that feedback

(35:56):
yeah yeah, so that's, that's theultimate goal, but you know
we're talking, yeah, a long waydown the line.
Even if we can scale this todeath and we can have subs
around the world and we can beproducing in multiple regions,
which is what we want to do,it's going to take a long time
to get there.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
A long time and a lot of money, I'd imagine.
Yeah, well, you know, but it'ssomething that, like, I feel
it's very, very important fromhaving a conversation before we
film this, from havingconversations, from doing this
research, to be able to havethis conversation with you and
not be like, so, steve, what's,uh, what's water to you, kind of

(36:37):
thing, like it opened my eyesmassively.
I believe you piloted this inhotels and a few homes.
What are the kind of resultsthat you've seen in terms of
liter saves, energy saving,because obviously I think
there's a big stat that themajority, like you just said,
the majority of carbon andenergy bills is for heating

(37:00):
water.
And have you seen anybehavioral shifts?
Obviously, you trialed it inyour own home.
Did you see a big behavioralshift with your daughters, with
the people using it, right, um?

Speaker 2 (37:14):
we have got it trilling at the moment in a
hotel um I'll move on to that ina minute because the big one
that we've had um is in in myhome.
Um we put the system in in itsinfancy, so, um, I think it was
beginning of 24 um we got it inin january, got it working but

(37:36):
didn't interrupt.
Didn't um use it for engagingon the showers?
It was really there for a trialto test out the meshing, because
all the devices meshed to eachother.
So we were testing that anduplift to the cloud and we were
looking at data consumption andall that.
So we were looking at all thosestats, but we were obviously we

(37:56):
weren't monitoring what wasgoing on.
So you were seeing these trendsFrom what we were doing.
Our shower outputs were 12litres.
So you know, over a period oftime I thought, okay, I'm going
to buy new shower heads becausechoking them down doesn't work.
Because you've got a big showerhead.
If you reduce the flow to it,it blocks the report.

(38:18):
It comes out and it's not.
You lose the pressure.
So buy a slightly smaller headand you still get that feel of
pressure.
So you buy a shower head whichsays, oh, this delivers 8 litres
when you put it on your systemand because you've got a
pressurised system and you'redelivering that volume of water,
no, it doesn't.

(38:38):
So that's another good thingabout measuring it, because you
go, no, it doesn't.
So you still have to use a bitof a choking to actually get it
down to a roughly about the nineliters.
So we did that and then umintroduced the app.
We had a test flight so gavethe app to especially for the

(38:58):
oldest one, because she was.
Yeah, she was still using acolossal mat water, and so to
you know, this is, this ishappening, um, my wife and I
were away, and so it was onlythe kids were at home and the
water usage went up.
It's almost like you know catsaway and you know which is
bizarre, when I know damn wellwe're monitoring it.

(39:20):
So it's like really weird.
But they're saying okay, look,you know you're, you're here,
you're working.
Um, I'll give you 80 litersfree per day.
Yeah, after that, for everyliter, I'm going to charge you
three pence.
Um, now, a bottle of water aliter is 30p, so it was a tenth,
but it was just this reallysmall monetary value, yeah and I

(39:41):
said, oh, you can, you canadopt the apps.
so anyways, set the apps, yeah,and from now on that time on her
shower times were actually shesaved 25 on reduction of the
shower output and then, but shewas another 25 on time, so it
almost a 50% saving in her waterand energy use just by adopting

(40:05):
what we've got.
And then overall and the sortof the thing that really hit
home, I've got our previouswater bill, so three years
running the prior service beingadopted in average was 700
litres and it was prettyconstant.
It was up and down maybe six,nine five but it was 700 liters

(40:28):
a day.
Since everyone's adopted what,we've got a home and I've set
the shower times andeverything's.
You know hunky-dory it's gonefrom that down to 500.
We say 30 percent water andenergy costs just by, and
they're not restricted massively.
Five, six minutes still decentlong showers, sometimes not four

(40:49):
minutes, which is governmentaim, yeah, um.
But also I think there's a, anawareness, yeah, so it's not
just saying you know, should wehave a bath?
You know, should we know, do Ireally need to have a shower?
Or, if I have a shower, shouldI have a quick one?
Yeah, so I think there's moreto it than just you know.
Oh, we've restricted yourshower time so we've saved 30%,

(41:10):
but we have saved, so we're nowdown to sub 500 liters a day.
Everyone's still clean,everyone's the same people at
home, so nothing's changed apartfrom what we've done.
So that's the biggest stat.
And that's when I sat him downwhen the bill came through,
because I was waiting for it.
It came through and we're overover dinner and I just said you

(41:32):
know, this is what's happeningand they looked, they said we
haven't done anything, andthat's literally what I said,
but we haven't done anythingyeah, if you have you've, you've
changed your habit.
Yeah, and they couldn't.
You know, that was thatrealization, but Liam Young one.
He said we can't relate water,we can't relate liters, we don't

(41:54):
know what it is.
So I went and bought 96 litresof bottled water and stacked
them in the shower.
I said that's a nine-minuteshower, yeah, and took some
pictures of that.
But there's no correlationbetween that.
And I think I've started to useweight.

(42:16):
Okay, because water's sold bycubic metre, which again, people
don't't understand.
But that weighs a ton.
It's a ton in weight of wateryeah so maybe you know it's
tonnage more.
I don't know where thecorrelation is, but that was the
biggest you know revelationwhere they just but we've done

(42:39):
this and I call it by stealth,you've done this by stealth.
Yeah, you've just put this in.
It's now become an acceptednorm.
You know, you get this generalfade, but freya's guys, she was
at seven minutes but she mightstill spend eight minutes in the
shower because you don't haveto evacuate the shower straight

(43:02):
away.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's not like doing an ice bucket
challenge, no no.
You're five minutes up.
You've got an ice bucketchallenge coming.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
There's no Wim Hof or anything.
I'm just doing that With thehotel.
We've recently put a pilotproject into Sandman Signature
in Calde, gatwick and we've gota floor there.
So we've got the third floor.
They always stack from theground upwards so we've got

(43:32):
quite good occupancy rates.
They were very anti-engagingwith the guests.
They wanted it for the datacollection, they wanted to see
what was going on and all thatsort of thing.
And being an older building itwas quite a task to get these in
.
The way it works in hotels isbetween each room in a hallway

(43:53):
you get like a cupboard and it'scalled a riser and in that
riser you've got all the pipework and you've got the
electrics.
So that's where we put our kit.
So we don't have to get into aroom, we don't disturb anything
in a room, we don't rip a walldown.
You put the kit in the riser,in the hallway.
And in a modern hotel it wouldbe quite easy.

(44:15):
They should have shut-offvalves so they can isolate each
room.
So if they've got a problemproblem, they can just isolate
that room with a little levervalve, isolate that chopping of
the pipe works.
Quite a simple plumbing job toput stuff in, um, electrical
feed and you're away.
Their buildings are older thanthat, so there was a bit more

(44:36):
work to be done, but their guysdid it.
They came down from sheffield,they got their own team um and
it took longer than we'd liked.
We wanted it in january.
We didn't get it until it wasthe end of april, may time, um.
But the interesting thing wasthat we we could see the mapping

(44:56):
of the building, because onceyou've got, it's almost like
you're, you're seeing thatbuilding come alive.
It's like the blood.
Yeah, it's flowing, so you cansee temperatures, you can see
all these things so straightaway.
Although we only had 20 roomsout of 152, we could see traits,
we could see issues of waterdelivery.

(45:17):
I mean, these risers shouldrotate their water so they flow
around and they go back to thetanks and they keep flowing
around and and that's so you candeliver hot water to a room
almost instantly.
You've only got the length ofpipe from that riser into the
room, yeah, and if you imagineat home, if you start your
shower up, you have to wait 30,40 seconds before the water gets

(45:39):
from wherever the source is,whether it's a boiler or whether
it's a tank.
If you imagine a hotel and thetanks are on the ceiling, you
know, up in the top, or they'rein underground in a basement.
If you had to wait for thatwater to get from there to the
room, yeah, you'd go minutes, itwould be a long time.
But we identified that they'vegot some issues with some of

(46:00):
their risers.
They weren't rotating because,again, as you said, the time
it's taking for that hot waterto be delivered was longer.
So that was something which Ididn't expect.
We weren't expecting that tocome back.
We thought delivery would havebeen instant.
So you'll start now looking notjust at what you can do for the

(46:24):
environment.
You're looking at the chiefengineer.
You're looking at what can youdo for the engineers.
And way back I spoke to a chiefengineer, of another hotel
group actually, and he saidcould you tell me the
temperatures going in and out ofthe room, which?

Speaker 1 (46:40):
got me thinking about putting on the sensors to the
hot and cold.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
He said, because we don't know if we've got a check
valve issue.
Now that's a non-return valve.
They have to put on the coldand the hot.
So they don't know if they'vegot a leak back issue.
They don't know if a cold'sleaking back into the hot until
it's too late.
So he was very keen on thatelement of it.
He wanted to know whether thehot water temperature delivered

(47:05):
into the room is the righttemperature, because this leads
on to a risk of legionella.
So then you've got a legionellarisk.
So you're then monitoringtemperatures.
You're watching flow dormancyyeah, you can't leave water.
It's got to be below 20 degreesor above 50.
Yeah, anything in between that.

(47:26):
If you leave in a long enoughfor puffer to grow, you can get
these narrow issues.
Yeah, so that's quite a big one.
So we were looking at that.
You're looking at that wholemapping and the other thing that
came out of this we werelooking at some of the abuse.
Can I use abuse as the rightword?
Of course you can.
Of course you can.
It's quite notorious thatpeople use the shower to steam

(47:49):
their clothes, so they will hangthe clothes along the rail,
turn the shower on, shut thedoor and forget about it.
Yeah, so that can be any lengthof time We've seen 300, 400
litres used in a single, and itdoesn't work.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
It doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
The problem being and I'm not sure whether people
think a hotel is sort ofmiraculously different to a
home- yeah.
But they've got two 1,400 litrehot water tanks at this
particular hotel.
So that's 2,800 litres totalhot water in a roof space to

(48:29):
deliver water to 152 rooms.
Well, if you've got five or sixrooms running 300 litres of
water off and we're mapping thewater temperature, we can see
the depletion of their hot waterdelivery temperatures.
So you can see this depletionand what's happening is the
quicker you draw that wholewater off, the tank's reducing.

(48:51):
You're putting cold water in,so the water tank temperatures
drop in, yeah, which exasperatesthe issue, because then your
your thermostat, your valve, isshutting down the cold, putting
in more hot to maintaintemperature, so you get this
compounding effect.
And what we discovered was thosepeople doing that were
depriving other people of hotwater.
You actually had to.

(49:13):
You know people having to havecold showers, yeah, yeah.
So ethically it shifted theissue, because what we've had
from some really leading brandsof hotels they wanted, they
wanted to put this in, theywanted to put it into two hotels
, they wanted to put it into onein leeds and the ball said we

(49:34):
can't do this, we can't be thefirst, because we're monitoring
this and we're going to interactwith this.
So they've, they're on thesidelines watching us, as is a
load of other hotels watchingthis trial Sandman having us in.
We picked this up within threedays of the system being live,
but for them to say it's notethical to restrict someone's

(49:57):
water it's really not ethical tohave
someone pay for a room and notdeliver hot water to them.
So you're shifting thatparadigm, you're shifting that
behaviour to say, actually, asan institution, as a supplier to
these people, you actually havea duty of care to everybody.
So now they want to put thefade on.

(50:18):
So we're literally only juststarting, it's over.
We're going to introduce a fadeon.
So we're literally only juststarting, it's over.
Okay, we're going to introducea fade time.
Yeah.
So on that floor we're going tosay look, after x many minutes,
we're going to fade totemperature.
Now it?
It helps in multiple waysbecause the engineers are saying
, if we can stop people steamingtheir clothes, and you go, have

(50:42):
you got clothes steamers?
And a GM said, well, no, butactually someone came down and
asked me that and I think, well,you've got to be a bit
proactive on this.
Because if you actually havesome clothes steamers and you
put a note in a room to say,look, if you want to steam your
clothes, contact reception willlend you one for now.
So you're setting that.

(51:04):
Look, if you want to see meclose, contact reception will
lend you one for now.
So you're almost, you're settingthat oh, you know we're doing
that, yeah.
So you're actually makingpeople aware that you actually
know people are doing that.
For a start, yeah.
But the other thing if they dodo that and then you fade the
temperature down to 35 degrees A, it doesn't sting.
Yeah.
But also you're not depletingthe hot water tank anymore For
the other guests, for the otherguests.
So it's sort of this win-win.
So you're sort of saying, well,our system doesn't just measure

(51:27):
the water, we've actually got ameans of you taking some
control back of what people aredoing within your building.
Because if they deplete yourtanks, the amount of energy you
have to put from your boilers.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
To fill that back up.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
To back it back up again is huge.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
And we had a situation over the last couple
of days where we could see allthe temps dropping.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
So we pulled contacts their engineers and said you
know your temps are droppingRight.
Ok, get up in a plant room havea look.
One of the boilers tripped outso we knew their delivery
temperature was way down.
So one of those tanks, one ofthose borders wasn't working
yeah, so again you, you're,you're, it's, it's having this

(52:12):
closed loop.
It's always this, this system ofnot only just one thing and
this is something we've had todo to get the roi, to get the
return on investment is to think, okay, we've got this in, we've
got all these smart meters.
We've got to rag the hell out ofthis.
What else can we do?
What else can we offer as aby-product?
Not just controlling a shower,because just doing that it

(52:36):
wouldn't justify the expense ofputting the key, yeah, but you
start adding in all these otherthings and all of a sudden
you've got this roundedproposition where people like
that would do that and we, weneed that.
We need those as payingcustomers.
If you like those hotelsbecause they can see all the
benefits, yeah, to then be ableto adapt it and use it for

(53:00):
housing and use it foruniversities.
They can't afford the same.
They haven't got thesetransient guests who are paying
for their nightly stays.
They've got students.
They've got restrictions on howmuch they can charge the
students, so they're under thecosh, basically.
So you've got to have asegmented market.
You've got to look at whatbenefits you have, what you can

(53:20):
give yeah.
What would you charge for that?
But it's like anything, nothingworks unless it pays for itself
, and I think that's the otherthing about this sustainability
thing.
It's having this fantastic ideaof saying we're going to hit
net zero by 2030 with nocoherent plan, how you're going
to do that without actuallyhaving a financial going to do

(53:41):
that, yeah, without actuallydoing, having a financial model
to achieve that, yeah, andeverything else that goes along
with that is it's just nonsense.
You're just.
you're just making a statement,yeah but, yeah, like in an ideal
world yeah yeah, be carbonneutral by 2030 or whatever it
is in reality it's not gonnait's not gonna happen.
Same thing about's not going tohappen.
Same thing about building.

(54:02):
You know, building all thesehomes, millions of homes.
It's not going to happen.
It can't happen because it'snot for the want of trying.
It just can't happen.
We haven't got the resource todo it.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
I suppose as well, though for the hotels, if they
can.
I wouldn't be opposed to ahotel saying by the way, we've
limited your shower to sevenminutes, you can opt out of this
by doing this, but you're notsaving the planet or you're not,
et cetera.
I wouldn't be opposed to that.

(54:34):
I would probably actually quitelike that, because it shows
that they're doing stuff.
And then also, on the back ofthat, if people aren't, I'd
imagine in a hotel, I'm gonnaturn the shower on, then I'm
gonna go in the room, hold onthe phone's rung.
Yeah, I'm gonna have a phonecall.
The shower's still running.
I'd imagine that happens.
That's the kind of thing I cansee that happens.
And then at the end ofsomeone's stay without not I

(54:58):
don't know, this is kind of justme in my head going mad, when
they get their bill, they get aprintout of how much water they
used.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
I think that's another model that you could use
, especially on the more budgethotels, a bit like Premier Inn
or whatever like that, where youcould go.
Your allocation is X.
We're on this programme, we'vegot this, we're trying to save.
This is our mantra, and the bigproblem they've got these guys
is they're having to transitionfrom gas to electric.

(55:29):
Oh are they?
Yeah, for net zero.
So they know their heatingwater costs are going to go up
through the roof.
Yeah.
So they've now got to work outhow they're going to do that and
also how are they going to goup through the roof?
Yeah, so they've now got towork out how they're going to do
that and also how are theygoing to control their peak
demand, which is what we weretalking about a minute ago.
You know, it's like saying,well, if everyone's abusing it

(55:49):
during peak demands, between sixand eight in the morning,
whatever it is, whenever thathigh is, they've got to be able
to supply that.
And moving to heat pumps,moving to what we call more
sustainable heating you knowelectric is far more expensive
than gas, but obviously youdon't get the emissions.
So they're caught between thisrock and a hard place.

(56:10):
They know they've got to dosomething, and it's really in a
way, I suppose, what we'reseeing and the pain we're
suffering at the moment is we'resort of in front of a curve.
Yeah.
So we've come up with a system,we've come up with something.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
We've put a lot of money into it yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
But we're just ahead of a curve, which is a great
place to be.
It's a bit like anything else.
I don't know if someone said Iwas at a do in.
London.
I can't remember what he wastalking about.
I think it was hockey and icehockey, and the skill is to be
where the putt's going to end up.

(56:48):
Yeah, and that's really my hopeis that we've positioned
ourselves in front of it.
We've positioned ourselves andwe're going to develop it to a
stage where, once that'sdelivered to us, I actually
everyone wakes up to the factthat we've got to do something.
We've already there, we'vealready got a solution.
Yeah, um, and that's all theonly thing we can hope, because

(57:10):
otherwise, all the hard work andall the pain and you know the
financial stress that is put onus, it's the only thing that
eventually will be be worthwhile, and it's not about the
financial gain.
I never did this, especially atmy age I didn't do it.
Yeah, for the financial gain Ihad got other businesses and it

(57:31):
was.
You know I was winding down,but it's, it would be nice to
leave a legacy it's a legacypart of it.
I'm even now I'm not overlybothered about you know that
sort of it, but actually toactually go, yeah, well, that
was good we did something, wedid something right.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
You know, yeah doing the right thing, I think you,
you came up with an idea, andthe difference between you and
probably other people is theydidn't push it through.
Um, and you're running with it,and you're running with it to
your own, with your own, likeyou said before.
We started filming like it's uh, it's been a roller coaster of

(58:10):
a ride, but you're doing it andyou stuck it through yeah, it's
a massive roller coaster.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
I mean, I think anyone who's is on the
entrepreneurial side of things,um, especially if you're sort of
a neurodiversity like I am, youknow you go from these massive
highs and lows.
You don't business.
It doesn't seem to be anymiddle ground.
You either you know you'reeither up or you're really down
um, not not down in depressivestate, but that's sort of you to

(58:38):
then motivate yourself toactually keep keep going and
actually still believe in ityeah, because you just keep
hitting these these walls andyou hit these setbacks or
something goes wrong or you knowthe system comes offline or it
drops down or you go and youfeel this other problem you've
got with electronics.
So there's always other things,mechanical side of it.
Because of my background andbecause I'm an engineer and

(59:01):
because I've got production outin china and we do stuff out
there, that I nailed that inmonths, yeah it, that wasn't,
that wasn't a problem to me.
The frustration to me is theelectronic side of it.
It's taken years longer, yeah,yeah.
And and that tech side, yeah, Ididn't appreciate that and that
was a naivety on my part.

(59:22):
Yeah, you know that was it.
I can.
You know I can run this project, I can get this out.
Why can't you guys deliver?
And then, when you think aboutit, no one's ever done this
before.
No one's ever you know, this isnew.
There's not a model that you canlook at.
No, no model you can't look at.

(59:42):
No, no, there's elements of it.
You know, obviously, puttingdata to the cloud, that's,
that's a simple thing.
But it's having those metrics,that sort of temperature, time
and volume, and you put allthose together and then you've
got to try and break out what iswhat.
Yeah, so, um, it's, it has beena, it's been a learning curve
for me a massive learning curveand I've had to my impatience of

(01:00:05):
wanting to get it done and nailit.
I've had to take a back seat.
But also, what it's also doneis the world's not ready for it.
The investors aren't ready forit.
Water is notoriously bad forany investment.
People won't invest in water.
If you go to any vc orsomething and you talk about

(01:00:26):
water, again, I'm not interestedbecause the return of
investment is so slow.
Yeah, because the cost of it isso slow.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Yeah, it's just it's just a press cost but at this
point is it not uh, it it's a.
We need water, we need to dosomething.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Yeah, what they're doing we were a bit again.
Uk are lagging a little bit onthis.
But water rebates or watercredits, actually the water
saved, the value of the watersaved, is 10 times what the cost
of it is being delivered.
So especially, you know,building around the southeast
Cambridge and all that waterneutrality, they can't build

(01:01:04):
unless they can prove but we'renot going to extract more water
for those homes now we know, andso does the local councils, and
so does everyone else knowthat's greenwashing because
they've got no means of reducingthe used water in current
properties and high users withhotels or industry, so without

(01:01:29):
the ability to reduce the use.
So then you end up with a credit.
So you end up with oh, we'vesaved X, many thousand litres.
Therefore those credits can besold to a developer to then
develop.
So it's almost a kickback.

(01:01:49):
So you save on your bill.
But you'll say you get moneyback from what you've saved.
And until those dots are linedup and that system is in place
so that there is this realincentive for people to save,
yeah.
And there's value added to that.
And also then you've also gotsomething which you can truly

(01:02:11):
measure and say, yes, we areneutral.
And actually what we want to dois not become neutral.
It's got to become the otherway.
We've got to start to reduceconsumption.
So we refill in our aquifer sowe're building up our water
table.
Um, we know we're near as bad.
I mean, you've got beijingwho's sinking.
You've got um mexico city'ssinking because they've taken

(01:02:35):
six fractures so much water outthe ground it's actually going
down really, yeah, um, and youknow china as as a, as a model,
if you like.
They've spent 85 billion usdollars on a overground sort of
aquifer, if you want to call itthat, to get water from southern
china up to beijing so it's amassive, it's huge if you, if

(01:03:00):
you want to google, that it'smassive and it's not widely
talked about because, um, I onlyknow that through my contacts
within china and the guys thatare looking at setting up the
china company, um, I've gotpictures of this thing.
It's huge and even in it'sgoing through regions, which is
which are prone to earthquake.

(01:03:21):
But this is a massive overgroundreservoir, or it's not a
reservoir, but it's pumpingwater from one end of the
country up to the other.
Now you don't do that unlessyou've got a problem, and
they've had lots of unrestrictedboring holes.
So that's how agriculture is.

(01:03:41):
They bore holes and extractwater from the ground.
So it's extracting it from theaquifer, but the tables drop so
much they can't get pumpspowerful enough to get it out
the ground, and when it is, it'sso contaminated they can't use
it.
So this is what's happening allover, yeah, and this stuff that
you just don't think about is um, we're, we're talking.

(01:04:04):
I've got a meeting actuallylater on with a hotel group in
um, dubai, dubai of usingdesalinated water okay now
that's.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
And now going back to our original question why don't
people worry?

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
because people look at it and I look at the earth
and they look at all this waterand they go well, we'll just
desalinate it, yeah, so theyinstantly think there's a
technology solution for this.
We don't have to worry becausesomeone will come up with a
solution.
Yeah.
And desalination, yes, is goingto play a part, but these plants

(01:04:38):
are huge and it makes thatcountry very vulnerable because
that is their source of water.
So, whether it's cyber attack,whether it's a disaster of an
oil spill or something, and theycan't disalinate all of a
sudden, yeah, they are, they'rein big trouble.

(01:04:59):
So at the moment you buy toSalinas and they're pumping
water back into the ground torefill their aquifers because
they've depleted them so muchbecause mass expansion these
cities are growing massively sothey're having to pump water
back into the ground.
So it's not just going toactual use, they're putting it
there as a reserve and I thinkthey've only got about 45 days

(01:05:24):
of reserve.
That's all they've got.
So if something happened totheir plants, they either be
taken out by, you know cyberattack.
Yeah, yeah anything, any, anyfuture war will be over water,
and the first thing now here, ifyou're relying on anything like
that, is those places yeah Itake them out and that country

(01:05:45):
be on its knees in minutes.
It wouldn't even take long.
Yeah, um, not different aschina with this water supply.
Go out there.
You know it's vulnerable, itmakes them vulnerable and it's
all about.
If you didn't use so much andyou actually used the natural
cycle and you had it toreplenish, you could say so.

(01:06:06):
That's why we're saying theserebates or these credits are so
important, because when youstart looking at that and you
start, it's like these megareservoirs they're looking at
building and how many billionsof pounds are going to cost and
how long 10 years, it's too long.
10 years it's too long.
You know it's just no good.
It's a long-term plan for maybesomething else, but that's not

(01:06:27):
going to help us now.
No, but also, if you could cutdown if we could cut down 20% of
our water use because we'rejust thinking about it and using
it differently, so notsuffering at all?
No, it's just indulgence.
Yeah, using it differently, sonot suffering at all no, it's
just indulgence.
Yeah, if you can cut that downall of a sudden you've got that

(01:06:49):
additional money that they coulduse.
And I agree with what you'veput up before, it's that there
needs to be mass regulation.
There needs to be much bettermeasurement of what those
companies have got to achievebefore they start paying out
dividends, before they startusing that money for anywhere
else.
They've got to hit and achievetrue, measurable sort of

(01:07:12):
milestones and actually do itnot talk about it, but do it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Yeah, and that's the thing, and not have roads
leaking for six years in thesame place.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Again, I don't want to get into this and there's
probably companies out therealready doing this.
We can measure all the water ina building.
Yeah, there's nothing stoppinganyone putting similar sort of
devices or they'd be a lotbigger and they could be working
purely off of it.
Doesn't have to be into thewater system, they could be on

(01:07:45):
it, but they could be a bit moresophisticated.
If you put these, thesemeasuring devices, these
metering a period periods downany feed of water yeah and you
had this around the country.
So all of a sudden you've gotthis mapping of water flow.
You know the volume of waterpassing.

(01:08:05):
What if the volume coming outof the other one is less?
You know where the leak is yeah, you know you, it doesn't take
rocket science to work out howthey could use ai.
It's not really ai, becauseyou're not actually trying to
invent anything all you're doingis monitoring yeah, and
analyzing flow patterns yeah andit's yeah, it's simple.

(01:08:26):
You know, x equals one and if itdoesn't, we've got a problem
there and it wouldn't take themthat long to roll out that sort
of stuff.
It's got to be doable, yeah,and that's what we need.
We need that sort ofinfrastructure as well, so they
can.
They can pinpoint and knowexactly where to send their team
.
All right, it might be a milelength, whatever.

(01:08:48):
However, each station needsthese devices, but I can see
that being definitely a way togo and probably someone's
working on that.
I hope they are.
Yeah, you know it should be asmart cities or smart countries.
We've got the technology.
Yeah, employ it and do it,because you know you're saving

(01:09:10):
awful lot of money an awful lotof time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Yeah, it's, um, it's.
I don't want to.
Obviously, we've covered quitea lot of the stuff here, just
organically and like we.
We just spoke about the megareservoirs and stuff that are
going to take.
I mean, they haven't thicket,8.7 billion liters, 21 million
liters a day, and they're yearsand years and billions of pounds

(01:09:35):
away.
Um, but something as not simpleas shower cap.
I'm not saying shower capsimple, but what I'm saying is a
simple resolution to trying toreduce.
Like you said, you've basicallysaved 30% on your water use in
your home.
Yeah, if everybody did that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
Yeah, the landscape changes overnight, but we can't
to scale what we're doing, butsomehow in conjunction with it
being in certain places.
So if it touches someone or ittouches a family member, who can
go back and do it?
Don't do that.
Do you realise it's reallyopening up this awareness?

(01:10:18):
Think about it, don't just doit, think about it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
if we't just do it, think about it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
But if we can do that , behavioural change can make a
difference overnight.
Yeah.
But it's how do you get massbehavioural change?
I think that's Education,that's the big one.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Yeah, hopefully, hopefully, but it's difficult
because again as I said to youearlier on, you adapt to your
environment, so you might knowit, but when you stand in that
shower, especially as ayoungster, and you zone out and
you start thinking about allthese airy fairy stuff, whatever
that going on about, whateverthat doing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Yeah, all of a sudden , 20 minutes, half an hour's
gone by.
Yeah, you do need that sensorynotch, you need something a
little bit extra, which is whereI came up with what I did.
But yeah, ideally we should bein every home.
Yeah.
We should be everywhere, weshould be measuring stuff in

(01:11:19):
every home.
But then that model becomesmore difficult because ours is a
, it's a house model.
Actually.
We're not actually selling thehardware.
We're.
You know we're putting it as aservice.
So there is, there is a cost upfront, but the kit will always
be owned by us, which means it'sgot a lifetime warranty.
It never runs out, yeah.
And then there's a subscription.
So you this is how you know yougot a subscription service so

(01:11:41):
you can maintain it, you candeliver that service.
When it gets to domestic, thatbecomes a little bit more
difficult because, as I said,when you're offering a big
institution, a big building, allthese layers and layers and
layers of advantages, all of asudden, when you come down to
domestic, it's a much smallerthing.

(01:12:03):
So, as a company, we need thesuccess of a business model from
doing larger things to thenafford to do.
B2C sales or do it to developersor do it to whatever.
So you're going to drop.
It's going to be a completelydifferent financial model to do

(01:12:24):
that.
Yeah, and the unit, the way whyit talks.
It won't be meshing like oursor it'll be talking directly you
know they might have abluetooth thing that could
adjust it it won't be assophisticated
yeah, but but the you know, butit will still be doing the same
thing.
So, that is a future evolutionof what we're doing, and the

(01:12:46):
more successful the business,the quicker we can get to that,
because it's needed.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
So if you was to put it in a residential property,
for example, what would you do?
Would you retrofit or would youfit it to the feeds into each
bathroom?

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
it depends on the size of the house and what's
available if you're in a flat orif you're in a smaller property
.
It's not even property likeyours, if you've got one
bathroom, or even if you've gotone bathroom downstairs, toilet
or whatever, it could go in theair and cold, it could come off
a combi.
So you, so you'd put it off ofthat, yeah, yeah, and then you'd
have the cold, total water in.

(01:13:25):
You could put so reallygenerally, in an air-in cupboard
would be the ideal place.
Or say, straight off a combiboiler you could use it there
and that would be doing thewhole house.
So, yes, you could put thisinto a normal home.
We would detect whether it was ashower because you set that in
the parameters.
So you know the flow output ofa shower and if it goes over a

(01:13:47):
certain length of time, right,that is a shower.
Yeah, so you can distinguishthat between that and the bath,
the bath will run at a higherflow rate.
So we, we can, we can take thefade off.
Yeah, that this is a bath, thisfarmer, um, and you move on
from there.
The next evolution we're justworking on at the moment is to
put shuttle valves in, soelectronic shuttle valves to the

(01:14:11):
hot and cold.
So again, you know, in a hotelscenario they can set a literage
and if it goes over that andit's running a bath.
It would turn the water off.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
Because Flooding overflowing Premier Involve is
up.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
Could you do this?
Because they have a lot ofissues.
And funny enough.
Not, it wasn't funny, butSandman, one of their guests,
decided to run a bath and thento go outside for a cigarette.
So 450 litres later it took outthat bath from the one below.
Yeah, um, so it was already onour radar and it's it's

(01:14:50):
something we will put in.
So there are companies outthere that do leak detection and
all this sort of stuff.
But if we can monitor and wecan go right, if we're all in
the same, all the same thing.
So the same box is sending out.
We just put a couple of 12-voltelectronic shut-off valves
which link back to our box,which we're already working on.
So during the next year we willevolve those, we'll develop

(01:15:14):
those and they could beretrofitted.
Even if someone's got a systemin, they could then put them in.
Yeah, and we had a scenario andI think it was two days ago and
it was two days ago uh, oneshower run for just under two
hours 960 liters, jesus christ.

(01:15:37):
So it happens now.
Whatever someone as you got.
He turned the shower on,probably got a phone call, went
outside to take the phone calland just forgot about it.
Went down to breakfast andforgot about it.
But that was nearly 1,000litres of water.
Now, with our system, we'rejust preventing our alert.
We all send an alert by emailto the hotel and they would have

(01:15:59):
to send someone up to actuallycheck.
Someone could have slipped,someone could have had a heart
attack.
I mean, god is that, I guesshave had heart attacks.
We've had, we, you know.
I guess you could have someonein the shower unconscious yeah
so you're right, you you don'tknow, but if you can detect it,
you can at least be aware of it,and you can intervene.

(01:16:20):
But if we, if we shut thatwater off but also send the
alert, it stops any more damageeither to the property or to the
environment or whatever.
But also then you can go andfind out what the problem was
and we got a little feedback onit To resolve an alert, they can
select a reason or country type.

(01:16:42):
So we want to start learningabout behaviour.
We want to start learning aboutwhat these events are.
Yeah, and that's the only timewe're going to start probably
using some sort of machinelearning or AI is to analyse
behaviour traits.
Yeah, so we can put outdifferent nudges, different
things to say and see what worksfor different people.

(01:17:05):
There's a lot that can expandout of this.
There's a lot that's got more.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
I mean even people in the houses.
If you put it on the boilerfeed on a combi, most of the
stuff feeds from it.
If you go on holiday, how manypeople I mean I know people have
been on holiday and something'sgone while they're on holiday
and it can ruin a house yeahyeah, whereas if you've got a
clever valve that's saying,right, something's been running

(01:17:36):
here for longer than it normallywould, let's shut it off on
alert or alert them first, andthen they can say, right, shut
it off or alert them first andthen they can say, right, shut
it off From that.
I think that's genius, yeah,well most systems out there do
that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
At the moment, there are systems out there where
we'll, do you know, a lot ofinsurance companies are putting
these out.
Okay, so you can get theseshutoffs, these valves that will
shut off.
But what I'm saying on oursystem, we you know, because you
, that can be an add-on, itmakes it a more rounded system.
So what we're doing is tryingto cover off this stuff, and our

(01:18:11):
system isn't right for everyoccasion.
You know we can't do everything, no, but there are other
systems out there which whichcan and I think I've, I've.
I speak to a lot of peoplewithin the water industry now
and you're going.
I'm not worried about ourcompetition.
I really aren't, because if youlook at the scale of the market

(01:18:32):
, you know the hotel rooms 17odd million globally, 8.2, I
think it is now under thehospitality alliance.
You know million rooms now,that's just those hotels.
That's before you get to managebuilding residential.
We're never gonna be able tosaturate that many, no, so we

(01:18:56):
need other people doing otherthings, which we wouldn't.
It wouldn't be cost-effectiveto put our system in certain
buildings.
We went and our team went andlooked at Mid Sussex District
Council because they wereinterested and their structure
isn't right for us.

(01:19:16):
But they might be right for oneof I wouldn't say our
competitors, but our compatriots, somebody else who does the
system, which is just totalwater in and has got a shuttle
valve on it and is sending someform of monitoring that would
work.
Yeah.
So, I think ultimately,everybody's got to get their
grown-up Big boy pants on Bigboy pants on.

(01:19:39):
Yeah, sit down and go.
Look, you guys are really goodat that.
If we come across someone whosays, can you put us in?
It's not right for us, but Ican put you on because it
doesn't matter who does it, it'sbeing done.
We've got to make a difference.
We've got to do.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
We've got to do something we're going to wrap
this up, but there's a couple ofthings that I'd like to finish
on.
What is the one thing you wishthat every single household in
the UK truly understood abouttheir water usage?
Obviously, we've covered a lotof this over the last hour and a

(01:20:21):
bit.
But if there was one thing thatyou wish everybody actually
understood, Obviously we'vecovered a lot of this over the
last hour and a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
But if there was one thing that you wish everybody
actually understood, I think Igo back to the immediate and
something which is quiteprominent at the moment, which
is sewage spills, and all thatsort of stuff, I think,
irrespective of whether you feelyou can afford your water or
whether you're entitled to yourwater.

(01:20:47):
I think it's the understandingthat you've got to understand
that that is contributing toanother problem which is very
immediate, which is this sewageside of things.
It's really hard because withoutanything in, like we've got now
yeah to, to let your, youryounger members of your family

(01:21:08):
know, or anybody else said it'sreally difficult because it's
habit and it's it's really hard.
Yeah, yeah, people are bangingon the door, but you can only
bang on the door if you're thereyeah and you, and you know it
doesn't it's not great forpeople.
But if they can understand, Ithink, how much water is used in

(01:21:31):
a shower because it goes down aplug hole.
You don't see it, yeah, Whereasif you fill a bath up you've
got some visual concept of howmuch is in there.
Visual concept of how much isin there, but actually when
you're running a shower, tothink even a moderate flow rate,
10 minutes is 100 liters ofwater, so that's effectively

(01:21:53):
you're not water off.
Half full, third full bath yeahthat that correlation maybe
would be.
I didn't recognize that and I'vehad that a lot.
Where people go what a showeruses more than a bath, yeah,
yeah, yeah, a lot of the timeit's using more than you're
using a bath.
Yeah, you can, you can, youknow you can own a bath for an

(01:22:16):
hour.
Yeah, you know.
If you want to chillax, have abath, bath, yeah, if you've got
one, but if not, you know you'vegot to realise that, basically,
if you're spending that long ina shower, it's indulgent, yeah,
yeah, and it's having an impacton the environment and on your
costs.
It's not the water costs, it'sthe heating of that water.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
It's the heating of the costs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
So for someone listening whowants to live a bit more
mindfully about their waterconsumption, where can they
start?
What can they start to do?

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
I think really that is it.
We've got a number of, we'vegot quite a lot of investors.
Actually, a lot of family andfriends and associates have
invested in shower caps and it'squite strange that they haven't
got any of our kit in.
No, but they're alreadychanging their behaviour at home
because they're aware.
Yeah.

(01:23:15):
Because they're seeing the posts, they're seeing the things that
are coming out and we're tryingnot to make it too doom and
gloom.
You know there's this too muchbad press out there at the
moment.
You're trying to keep it aslight as possible yeah but yeah,
if people just a little bitmore aware and I think that's
that goes across everything,doesn't it?

(01:23:37):
It's like when you're buyingyour food shop, don't overbuy,
because it's going to end up ina bin yeah yeah you, yeah you
know we don't need that.
It ends up, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
And that's a very similar situation to water.
Don't overindulge, because it'sonly ending up in a bin.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
Exactly.
I mean, there's this adage oh,it goes back into the cycle,
which is why I'm saying aboutokay, think about what it's
doing when it overfills and itends going into the rivers.

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
It's going into the seas.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
You don't mind about the state of the seas and the
rivers.
But you've got to think back toactually, can I make a
difference?
And you can, because oursystems are overrun.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
They can't cope.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
So this is what I was saying about these mega
reservoirs.
It's all very well, what'sgoing to happen to our water.

Speaker 1 (01:24:26):
What are they?

Speaker 2 (01:24:26):
doing about, you know , marrying that up to treatment
plants.
Oh, we're just going to pumpmore and more sewage in the sea.
Horrible statistic globally.
But 80% of sewage ends up inthe sea, untreated, globally 80%
.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
Wow, that's incredible, and most of it is
from countries that don't havetree implants.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
Yeah, but we're as guilty.
So there is this knock-on thatpeople don't associate water
with, and even you knowcountries that have got an
abundance of water.
Yeah.
When they're building these megacities.
You know countries that havegot an abundance of water.
Yeah, when they're buildingthese, these mega cities, um,
you know whether it's toronto,whatever, wherever you go on the
metropolis of people, you'vegot to deal with the waste and

(01:25:12):
and that is you know if you'vegot lakes and whatever.
Stop using as much the quickestway we can change the planet,
the quickest way we can becomesustainable, is to think about
what we're doing and that's notjust water.
That's everything so think about.
Do we really want to go and dothat?

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
do we really have to drive down the road?
Do we really have to?

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
buy those new clothes whatever it is.
We don't need to do it be a bitmore mindful just be a bit more
mindful and repair stuff ratherthan just being it, because you
know throwaway society is andwater's the same.
We're throwing away, we'rewasting it wicked well, thank
you very much, steve.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
That's been, uh, extremely enlightening.
Um, I've learned a lot fromthat.
Um, just finally, if peoplewant to find out more about
shower cap and how they caneither be involved or just to
learn about it, what's the bestway to do that?

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
We're on social.
We're on LinkedIn.
It's our main platform.
We're on Insta as well, butyeah, have a look, check us out.
It's showercap with a K, not aC.
I'm dyslexic.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
That's a good way of doing it and what I'll do is I
will link your, I'll link theLinkedIn page and I'll link the
website in the show notes forthis.
And yeah, if anybody, if that'sbeen interesting, please let us
know.
And if you've got any questionsfor Steve, then get in touch
with shower cap and the teamwill help you out again.

(01:26:44):
Thank you very much, Steve.
Thanks for coming in.
That's been wicked.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:47):
I've been good, thank you.

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The Hidden Truth About Water Waste — and What One Founder Did About It

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Hidden Truth About Water Waste — and What One Founder Did About It