Just 46p per Day to Have Boiling and Chilled Water at Your Workplace

Let’s invent a fictional company. We don’t know what product or service the company sells. We’re only interested in staff refreshments.

This company employs 18 full-time staff, and they all work in one large office. The office operates Monday to Friday for 50 weeks in the year. (The staff take a two-week break over Christmas and New Year.)

We’ll call the company CashSave Ltd. The boss’s name is Sophie.

CashSave Ltd has always provided the staff with refreshments at work. Sophie believes that good hydration is key to health and wellbeing, and she knows that if she looks after her workers, productivity will be high.

CashSave Ltd is located in a fictional county called Averageshire, where electricity charges are always set at the UK average. For the past two years, in Averageshire, the standing charge has been 20.58p per day, and the electricity unit rate 14.4p per kWh.

Kettles and bottles (Year 1)

Until a year ago, the CashSave staff made their hot drinks by boiling the three office kettles. Sophie also provided each member of staff with a 2-litre bottle of water daily.

Each of the three 2kW kettles held 1.5 litres of water, which provided 6 servings.

Four times a day, all three kettles were filled and boiled for hot drinks. Each kettle consumed 0.1 kWh at each boil. Every day, the cost of boiling 12 (4 x 3) kettles was 17.28p.

Sophie would buy bottled water in bulk, and each 2-litre bottle cost the company 50p. The daily cost of water was 900p.

In Year 1, the daily cost of drinking water at CashSave Ltd was 917.28p.

Aqua illi – the world’s smartest touch tap (Year 2)

Exactly one year ago, Sophie made a radical change at the office: she had a new water dispenser unit installed. It was the Aqua illi tap, designed and built in the UK by Aqua Libra Co – an industry leader in commercial boiling- and chilled-water dispensers, and the industry’s No.1 for after-sales service.

Built in modular form, Aqua illi can be adapted to requirements. At present, the office model dispenses boiling and chilled water, but Sophie is planning to add sparkling-water to the unit in the near future.

The Aqua illi tap in the CashSave office is switched on for 12 hours a day, five days a week.

In standby mode, the boiler consumes 0.1kWh of energy per hour. In full operation mode, it consumes 1.1kWh per hour (constantly in use).

At each tea break, the boiler is in operation mode for approximately 10 minutes, consuming 0.183 kWh. In a day (a total of 40 minutes), the boiler consumes 0.732 kWh in operation mode. During the 11 hours and 20 minutes in standby mode, the Aqua illi boiler uses 1.13 kWh of energy. The daily running cost of the Aqua illi boiling tap is 26.8p.

The Aqua illi cooler delivers up to 600 deliciously chilled cups of pure water every hour.

In full operation mode, the cooler consumes 0.15kWh. To say that the cooler is in operation mode for 50% of the 12-hour day is surely an exaggeration, but we’ll use this figure in the knowledge that we’re in no danger of under-estimating the running costs. Therefore, over a period of six hours, the cooler consumes 0.9kWh, at a cost of 12.96p.

All water dispensed by the illimani taps is purified – a process that consumes 0.432kWh in each 12-hour day, at a cost of 6.22p.

In Year 2, the daily cost of drinking water at CashSave Ltd was 45.98p.

Comparisons

In Year 1, Sophie spent £2,293.00 on drinking water. The total cost of drinking water in Year 2 was £114.95.

How does Year 2’s figure compare to Aqua Libra Co’s competitors – the best of the rest?

It’s approximately 50%.

How does it compare to the total cost of drinking water in Year 1?

It’s approximately 5%.

How do you provide drinking water at the office?