Tufloo leads the way with Rainwater Harvesting

When faced with the ever-increasing cost of using metered, mains water to clean and service his company’s portable toilets, Tufloo’s MD Tom Costello consulted with us about our range of rainwater harvesting tanks.

Tom’s Dublin depot has a huge roof as a catchment area and we jointly decided on a mid-sized 20,000 litre water tank equipped with a 2” drain valve, bolt-down feet and a large rainwater harvesting filter, all of which Tom planned to have installed on a raised platform on his yard in Dublin.

The idea of using a raised platform was so that the tank’s outlet would be positioned at a higher level than his tanker vehicles: all his drivers need to do is park up next to the tank, connect up their pipework and let the harvested rainwater flow under gravity into their water tanks.

The water is pre-filtered and has an inbuilt calmed inlet system so that rainwater is directed to the bottom of the tank without disturbing any sediment. There’s also an overflow system in case the tank is full - and by any chance it carries on raining - so that excess water is directed back down the building’s downpipe.

Although it’s hard to be precise about the amount of rainfall to fall, as this varies by postcode – and let’s face it, it’s been rather wet in Britain and Ireland during 2024 – a rough calculation on just a 450m²roof leads us to a yearly collection volume of 293m³. Divide that by 12 to give a monthly figure and Tom would expect to be harvesting 24m³, i.e. 24,000 litres per month. Naturally, one would generally expect the harvested volumes to be lower during the summer months.

However you calculate it, that’s 24,000 litres of water per month for cleaning portable toilets and recharging toilet waste tanks that is effectively free of charge, and is also great for reducing Tufloo’s carbon footprint.

‍