Patel Center for Global Solutions, University of South Florida

Tampa, FL

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Project

Patel Center Rainwater Harvesting Project For Toilet Flushing

The Patel Center is the first LEED certified building at the University of South Florida, and sustainable water practices were an important objective for the building’s steward. The University contacted Wahaso to design and build a system that would take captured rooftop water and harvest it to flush toilets in the building.

Challenge

With an estimated occupancy of 700 students and 70 teachers and employees per day, the system needed to capture, store and treat enough rainwater to meet the demand of 1,400 gallons per day and over 1,000 flushes.

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Water Supply Sustainability Index (2050)

Project Details

LOCATION

South Florida, Tampa, FL

CLIENT

University of South Florida

DESIGN & SPECIALTY

Plumbing Engineer, Civil Engineer, Commercial Contractors, Commercial Architect

BUILDING TYPE

Educational

SYSTEM TYPE

Rooftop Rainwater to Flush Toilets

COMMISSIONING DATE

September, 2010

Project Gallery

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Solution

Wahaso sized the system to store 30,000 gallons of rainwater filtered from the roof in a single fiberglass tank built by Containment Solutions. The high-capacity pumps were housed in a wet vault located below grade next to the tank. This helped minimize the amount of utility space required by Wahaso’s processing system.

Results

The building was commissioned late 2010 and is expected to save the university over 350,000 gallons per year of municipal water.