Building Water Resilience: Why Installers Are Key to Tackling Scarcity

Water scarcity is rising rapidly up the construction industry’s agenda, but creating a more resilient built environment will require more than efficient products. Erin McCusker, Chief Impact Officer at LIXIL, tells Lucy Dixon why innovation, regulation, greater awareness and the influence of skilled installers must all work together.

Following a summer in which drought conditions and water restrictions affected several parts of the UK, water scarcity has become an increasingly visible issue.

However, the challenge extends far beyond temporary hosepipe bans. It has implications for where and how buildings are constructed, the infrastructure serving them and the way people use water throughout their daily lives.

For Erin McCusker, LIXIL’s first Chief Impact Officer, the construction industry has an important part to play in preparing for these changing conditions.

“The construction industry is the bridge between people and how they interact with their environment,” she says. “If the homes, offices, workplaces, shops and community spaces we are creating do not take these changing dynamics into account, they will not serve us in the way they need to.”

Erin’s global role covers LIXIL’s impact strategy across its operations, products and services, as well as its communications, policy and regulatory engagement and partnerships. The company’s brands include GROHE in Europe, alongside American Standard, INAX and SATO in other markets.

Its priorities range from water, carbon and circular living to access to safe sanitation and hygiene. The company is also examining wider challenges affecting the construction sector, including skills shortages and the availability of qualified labour.

Water efficiency without compromise

Manufacturers can support the transition towards a more water-resilient built environment by reducing the water consumed by products such as showers, taps and toilets. However, Erin believes their role also includes raising awareness and working with the wider industry to encourage greater adoption.

Although water-efficient technology is already widely available, some customers remain concerned that reducing consumption will mean accepting poorer performance.

“We have to work together to break the stigma that water efficiency or high water performance does not equate to a positive experience,” says Erin.

The industry’s challenge is therefore to develop and promote products that use fewer resources without making the user feel that they are losing out. GROHE’s AquaBooster technology, for example, uses the distribution and pulsing of water to produce a fuller showering experience while maintaining water efficiency. 

Erin says advances in technology such as this mean households don’t have to choose between performance and responsible consumption. “You really don’t have to sacrifice that enjoyable experience to achieve water efficiency,” she adds.

Greater visibility of consumption could also help overcome misconceptions. Erin points to LIXIL’s work with Droplet, which has developed an aftermarket connected sensor that attaches, without new plumbing installation, to a main water pipe and provides an estimated breakdown of household water use.

After installing one at her own home, she discovered that the toilet was using more than six gallons of water per flush. Replacing it, along with the shower heads, produced an immediate improvement which could be seen through the device.

“My husband didn’t mention anything, and neither did my stepdaughter,” she says. “There was no change in their experience.”

Turning awareness into action

The cost of efficient products is not necessarily the principal barrier to adoption, Erin says, highlighting that many products on the market already incorporate water-saving features. Consumers do not always have a strong enough reason, however, to replace older fittings that may remain operational for many years.

Incentives have helped drive the uptake of energy-efficient technologies, but equivalent support for products such as low-flow showers and more efficient toilets is not always available at the same scale.

Water consumption can also represent a relatively hidden household cost. Until scarcity affects somebody directly, or their bill begins to rise significantly, it may not command the same attention as energy use.

Changing this will require cooperation between manufacturers, government, utilities, builders and installers. It is particularly important for newbuild projects, where water performance can be considered at the design stage rather than addressed retrospectively.

Installer influence

Standards and regulation can help establish consistent expectations and allow lessons to be shared between different markets. LIXIL has worked with organisations including PMI,  IAPMO, the Alliance for Water Efficiency and the Bathroom Association to support conversations around areas such as water efficiency, lead-free water systems and the materials used within plumbing installations.

However, regulation and product development will only take the industry so far. Customers must also feel confident choosing these technologies, which places installers in a particularly influential position.

“The installer is your bridge,” Erin explains. “If you have an advocate in your plumber or builder who can explain why something makes sense, why it is the best choice and why the customer will not have to sacrifice their experience, you need that influence on the ultimate decision.”

This is especially important when installers are understandably reluctant to challenge a customer’s preferences for fear of dissatisfaction or callbacks. Giving professionals the knowledge and evidence to recommend efficient products confidently could therefore be central to increasing uptake.

Looking beyond individual products

Innovation remains a core pillar of LIXIL’s long-term strategy, but the company is looking beyond simply reducing the amount of water used by an individual fitting.

One focus is the relationship between water and energy. Heating water is a significant part of domestic energy consumption, meaning products capable of cutting both water use and the energy needed to heat it can deliver a wider environmental and financial benefit.

GROHE’s Rapido Heat Recovery shower system, for example, is designed to recover heat from waste shower water and use it to preheat the incoming cold supply.

LIXIL is also investigating solutions for communities experiencing particularly severe problems, including areas affected by water scarcity or without conventional plumbing infrastructure. Its work includes considering water reuse and treatment at a whole-house level.

“If we can solve these challenges in those environments, it gives us a set of capabilities that we can expand and apply in more markets as those problems become more prominent,” says Erin.

“We are investing now in solving these intense, crisis-type challenges because we believe these are capabilities we will need far into the future.”

Creating a joined-up water system

A genuinely water-resilient built environment cannot be achieved through isolated interventions. Installing an efficient shower or toilet can produce immediate savings, but Erin believes the industry must ultimately understand how water moves through and is consumed by an entire building.

That means combining efficient products with monitoring, data, reuse and treatment where appropriate. It also requires trained professionals who can specify, install and maintain the systems, supported by regulation that enables innovation.

“The first step is not thinking about these environments in isolation,” she says. “It is not about a single water-efficient system. It is about understanding the full water usage, taking a whole-house, holistic view and beginning to minimise its footprint.”

For installers and builders, that creates both a responsibility and an opportunity. Their decisions can improve water efficiency on an individual project, while their advice can influence the choices made by customers across the domestic and commercial sectors.

“You can affect the operations of a single site and help people make better decisions about the products they choose,” Erin says. “Empowering the sector to be that influencer is an open door. That voice would be really valuable.”