Building The Dream
Welcome to Building the Dream, the podcast for anyone passionate about property, construction, and the real stories behind creating amazing spaces.
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Each episode, we bring together honest voices from across the construction industry, sharing their journeys, expertise, and the trials and tribulations they’ve faced along the way. From design and energy, to finance, renting, sustainability, and what it’s really like to bring a vision to life, Building the Dream covers it all, whether you’re working on a family home or a five-star hotel we hope this podcast gives you value.
This is my passion project, and a space i have created for open, authentic conversations and real education. I want you to feel inspired, informed, and never alone in your journey.
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Episodes drop fortnightly on Tuesdays, featuring special guests from every corner of the industry.
So whether you’re in the trade, thinking of starting a project, or just love a good story about building something extraordinary, you belong here.
Building The Dream
The Hidden Truth About Water Waste — and What One Founder Did About It
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Water isn’t just running out, it’s being wasted every single day in ways you’ve probably never thought about.
In this eye-opening episode of Building the Dream, we sit down with Steve Harding, founder of ShowerKAP, to explore the reality behind the UK’s growing water crisis, and the smart, behavioural tech that could help fix it.
From 71,000 homes built each year in the South East to showers that use more than a bath, this conversation will change the way you think about your own water use. Steve shares the personal story that led to ShowerKAP’s creation, why long showers are more than just indulgent, and how universities, hotels, and households are starting to pay attention.
💧 Why water is the real sustainability emergency
💡 How a behavioural “fade” in your shower can save 30%+ in water and energy
🛠️ What’s broken with the UK’s water infrastructure, and who’s really responsible
Learn how a father, an engineer, and an unexpected moment of frustration led to one of the most quietly important innovations in the fight for a more sustainable future.
🔗 Learn more: showerkap.co.uk
Introduction to Showercap
Speaker 1Welcome to Building the Dream , a podcast brought to you by Aura Surfaces . Today I'm sat with Steve Now . Steve has a very interesting story and is the founder of Showercap . Now , I'm not going to tell you too much about it because I want you to listen to the episode , but this is a very , very important topic that we're dealing with at the moment . So , without further ado , welcome Steve Harding , the founder of Showercap , to Building the Dream . How are you doing , steve ? I'm doing very well , ash .
Speaker 2Good good .
Speaker 1I want to start with a couple of things . The conversation why water ? The hard-hitting truth is South East Water recently pumped 680 million litres in a single day and they still couldn't meet the demand . That's nearly a billion litres more in just two weeks , compared to June 2022 . Why do you think people are still unaware that water scarcity is no longer a distant problem ? It's here and in the UK .
Speaker 2Oh hey , that's quite difficult because up until three , four years ago I wasn't aware of the problem . There's a lot of stuff that comes out on you know , don't , don't run your tap when you clean your teeth , don't . You know , don't do this , don't do that . But that's been around for a long time and nobody's really talking about how big the problem is . Yeah , why is that ? I don't know . Possibly because it's a blame game . You know , if water companies say you know we've got to save X , everyone else says yeah , but you're wasting Y . So it's a really difficult one because nobody wants to point a finger .
Speaker 1And I feel this in a lot of areas of the world we live in Everybody's finding someone to blame instead of all coming together and solving a problem yeah , I think that's .
Speaker 2I mean , that's true of everything which is going on at the moment . We're going through this , this whole cycle of what they call you know , your circular economy , if you want to put it like that . Um , we've had a throwaway society for quite a few years now , and I think people are starting to take notice of that . Um , even why good manufacturers have to manufacture things that can be repaired now where they weren't . Um , because people understand we haven't got a finite resource . You know they're digging minerals out of ground . Well , what happens when there's no more ? Um , so you've got all of that side of it and people are doing this , but nobody's really thinking about water , and that's . There's no more . So you've got all of that side of it and people are doing this , but nobody's really thinking about water , and that's . There's only one water . You know you've got various sources of energy .
Speaker 2You've got various things you can adapt to . We've only got one water and I think what's really happened is we've got out of sync with nature . Basically , we're using more than the system is replenishing .
Speaker 1We're seeing a massive building boom 71,000 new homes every year in the South East alone , all needing water . How realistic do you feel it is to keep relying on the old reservoirs and the leaky pipes ?
Speaker 2No one can build in the South East or Cambridge or anything without water neutrality . The builders need water credits to 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 credits which can be greenwashed . You can sell those to someone who's spending a load of carbon , and that's global . It floats around the world . It's global . Water is very local . You draw it from the reservoirs
The Hidden Water Crisis in the UK
Speaker 2, you draw it from underground , from the aquifers , and it's finite Once it's gone . It's gone . So you can't build 71,000 houses a year , but we can't supply them . Yeah .
Speaker 2What's coming out from the government recently is by 2055 , we're going to be X many billion litres a day in deficit , when actually it's happening now ? Why aren't they saying that ? Why aren't they saying we might have to turn your taps off ? Yeah .
Speaker 2I don't know . Again , this comes back to me sort of they're frightened too , because if they say something it's almost politics . They don't want to say something because somebody else will come back and fire another one at them and it would just be this baton ball of who's to blame . Yeah , again , pointing the finger .
Speaker 1Pointing the finger yeah , pointing the finger . Pointing the finger who I mean ? Kirsten , means I don't really want to get into politics . No , I I try and skirt that , but I mean some of the post he's saying about we've got to build this many houses , we've got to do this , we've got to do this . But they're not talking about the infrastructure and that's not just down to the roads and the schools and the doctor , surgeries and stuff .
Speaker 2That is down to the water and where we get it from it's , it's the water , and I think the more , the more pressing , and I'm starting to raise the awareness of what happens to that water once you've used it , once it's gone down the drain , because it goes to the treatment plants and they can't cope . So our rivers and our seas are getting discharged of sewage , yeah , and it's not just when it rains , it's happening almost daily yeah and that's just because of the way we're now using and consuming water , wasting it effectively yeah um , and it all ends up there .
Speaker 2You don't realize this an issue because you don't associate it with it . You don't associate that everything goes down the plug hole , everything goes down your drain ends up at the treatment plant and it's just not separating the water from the mucky stuff . It's all the same thing yeah so it's not just building a reservoir because they've got to build massive treatment plants to cope with the sewage ? Yeah , so where's that being spoken about , and who wants that in their backyard ?
Speaker 1It's all good and well-promised in these things , but you need a real plan of how you're going to achieve that . But another question , or it's sort of a fact , but shower and bath in account for 36% of water used in the home and 26.6% of household energy . They're huge numbers . What do you think anybody listening to this now is the top three things that they should do to do their bit to help save water ? What would you say ? Obviously , teenagers in the shower spending 25 minutes . I've got one , yeah . Um , my seven-year-old daughter said she was watching me brush my teeth and you're gonna hate me for this , daddy , when you're brushing , turn the tap off until you need it again . And she's seven , so that's quite good . That's quite good not good on my part , but good on her part . So what do you think ? What's the top three things that people could be doing to help do their bit ?
Speaker 2I think you know the shower is one of the big ones Toilets , also Understanding what is the short and what is the long flush , because up until I did this , and recently until I put the shower cap monitoring system in my home , my kids , young adults they're not kids um , thought the two buttons were just aesthetic . I didn't know . The little one used half as much water as the big one , um . So there's this , little things like 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 main thing that I was amazed at and because it's not measured is that showers , especially if you've got a pressurised water system , you're using up to 15 litres a minute down the shower .
Speaker 2So you know , 10 minutes , 150 it'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 three minute shower , four minute shower , that's good , but have a 10 minute show .
Speaker 2You should have had a bath yeah because there's not an association and because we haven't got any way of measuring , that it's become almost a norm Massive , great , big shower heads and these high-pressure shower systems . They're all driven by the major brands . You know we can do a bigger , better , faster . You know Faster . More water , yeah , more water . And even if you go into these pressurised 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 1I mean you know it can supply a vast amount of water , and it's not even pressure , is it ?
Speaker 2It's the volume of water that they're providing , yeah , but you know it's the volume , yeah , and then you and then flipping off of that combi boilers . They have improved so much over the last 20 years , whereas they used to not really supply a decent amount of water . Now they can .
Speaker 2And it's estimated because you can't actually get stats on it , but over a million are put in a year , so that's a million . Combi boilers , that's a million systems that in a year , so that's a million . Combi borders , that's a million systems that never run out of hot water yeah so the teenage could sit in a shower for 40 minutes and it would never run out . Yeah , so we've lost that association with I don't know .
Speaker 1I suppose how precious it is well , and that's that's a good point . I didn't even think of that because back I remember when we had you had the hot water cylinder 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 have that cold shower to realise , oh shit , everybody needs to right . Next time I'm not going to have a 10 minute shower because everyone's got to use it and I was last , and that's a good point . Actually , that's a very valid point . I didn't even think of that you know , this is what's happened .
Speaker 2Um , it's just , it's the availability , it's , it's almost . Um , you just don't think about it , because it's this , it's just this resource that comes out . It's , it's just this resource that comes out , it's whole resources flows . Yeah , and there's no thought process . Yeah . And I'm not saying it's anyone's fault , because I'm as guilty as anybody yeah . You know , it's just the way things have evolved in the richer countries in the developed world .
Speaker 1Totally different if you go , you know to a third world country and they're really savouring every bit of drinking water that they can get .
Speaker 2Yeah , well , I think
Our Disconnection from Water's Value
Speaker 2if you look at it there's some stats . I don't do stats very well , I don't retain stats , I tend to do more of the overview and I try and drill down to where the core problem is . But we use I think it's roughly about 150 litres per head . Might be 145 per head in the UK per day , America 257 really furball country 4 litres yeah and it's not just water , it's everything .
Speaker 2We're over consuming everything . We you know the richer countries are consuming more than the earth can produce in a shorter space of time . I did a leadership piece a little while ago and the uk hit their yearly consumption sometime back a few weeks ago now . Now , everything from then on , you're drawing resource out of the ground or out the earth which should be there for future . So all the time you're consuming more than it can give back . It's a one-way ticket , you know we just you know it doesn't take Einstein to work out what the end result's going to be . Yeah , you know it doesn't take Einstein to work out what the end result's going to be .
Speaker 1Yeah , and I go back to being a kid and going to Ardenlight Reservoir , which is obviously a beautiful place , yeah , and I think in all those times we used to have a dog , so we used to go there quite a lot and I remember one summer it was bare , it was really , and there was only one summer as a kid . Now we've had nice weather for the last few weeks and there's talks of hosepipe bans because they're running out of water . Is that down to do ? You think ? Is that down to a mixture of a multitude of things , whereas we're using a hell of a lot more but also we're not retaining it and like , like you said , we're not recycling it , we're not repurposing it . We've got an extra 50,000 houses built over the last few years . Is it just a mixture of everything put together ?
Speaker 2Yeah , 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're not seeing is also the water table under the ground . You know we're depleting that . We're not depleting it in the UK as much as other countries are , but you know you've got the surface water and then you've got your aquifers underneath , which are being depleted as well . So that's hidden . And I think there's this combination of things Nobody's got an overview of . No one's joining the dots , nobody's taking responsibility . You're joining the dots and you get governments in and they're in for whatever their term , but there's no continuity , yeah , when it comes to something like this . So everybody has their own opinion . That was , but it's . It's something that they should be able to look at and project and go .
Speaker 2We can't supply this yeah unless we do this , this and this . But actually what I'm saying and what I'm advocating and what we've got to do as a as humanity , is actually to reduce what we're using . We don't need to be using that much water , yeah we only need three or four liters a day to survive .
Speaker 2It's not a need . So you've got to move needs from greed . Everyone's got to be a bit mindful about what they're doing . Yeah , and the same with water consumption . You why Just having something there to remind you that actually , oh yeah , I've hit my target , you know I've done what I was doing , yeah , and actually bring it home . Yeah . And I think that's across the board . I mean , we're talking . I'm not going to save the world by saving water .
Speaker 1But it's a step . It's a step and you can do . I feel that . What when we'll dig into shower cap in a minute ? But I feel that what you've done with shower cap is educating .
Speaker 2It's about educating people on what you can , the little things that you can do to do your part to help and save yeah , I think , going back to when I renovated the property which you help with , you know we put , yeah , the tiles and everything in there . We put an en suite on the two girls bedrooms . So , yeah , teenage girls , two en suites . You know we had family bathroom for servicing one and a half kids and then we had our bathroom . So you're you're providing a means , in effect , to to compound the problem . Um , and we were using on in our property averaging 800 liters a day . Now , to me that was extortionate , but when you , when you think there was five of us , potentially 5.5 , because my daughter was coming in when you break that down it's actually not too mad , but I thought it was horrendous .
Speaker 2And before I even thought about a shower cabin , before the pandemic I was checking our meter to see if it was running when no one was at home , to see if I'd leaked . Now we'd replaced all of the fees into a house so it shouldn't have had a leak and we didn't have a leak so we were using that . So next thing I did , I got up in the loft and I put all the restrictor valves on all of the shower outlets and I choked them down a bit and it didn't make a great deal of difference . No , and it didn't make a great deal of difference . No , it didn't make a great deal of difference . And this is where this is the only tool available to the hotels , the universities and all that . What they're doing is they're choking the delivery , so they're restricting the flow to choke the delivery , and that's great . If you go from 10 litres to 8 litres , theoretically you've saved 20% . Yeah .
Speaker 2But that's only true if that person then stays in that shell for the same length of time . If you've now made it harder to wash your hair out , for argument's sake , get the soap out of it and you stay in there for another 10 minutes . Actually , you've used more water . Yeah .
Speaker 2So there's nothing to measure that at the moment , and that was something else that I I was keen to do is to try and say look you , if you can't change something , this you can measure it . If you can measure it , you can actually appreciate what you're doing . And you're right , it's about education , it's about enlightening people I was at an event in london .
Speaker 2Actually I was on a panel and I met a really interesting lady over lunch . We were just standing there talking and she came . Her family were from India . They were in a remote part , no running water , and she remembers as a child , before she went to school , the thing she had to do was to go to a well and collect water for the day . So that's obviously donkey's years ago . They've moved to the uk , as is her family , but her husband's family is still there and we were just talking and she's really interested and she was saying I really love her long shower , I said , but when I go home , they have a bowl on the floor and that's what everyone has to use to wash and everything like that , and .
Speaker 2But you get and you adapt . And she doesn't think twice about it . She just does it and you adapt and I think it is coming back to availability . It's opulence , it's there and it's just accepted . It's there . So going to having a standpipe or something like that for a few weeks and then it raining and everything . Oh yeah , I think it's hunky-dory again now and everyone just go back to their their normal way . It's nature , it's just a natural thing to do . And even she said I've never thought about that .
Speaker 2Yeah , I never thought why am I accepting that I can have a long shower here ? Yeah , yeah , I completely accept . When I go home , I've just got a bowl of water on the floor and it's really difficult to actually get your head around that . What I'm trying to do is supply some tools to enable people to actually think about that and understand . That's what it is you know but it's a big shift because it's not been done before .
Speaker 1No one's ever measured water like we're measuring water yeah , and that's a perfect opportunity to talk about the birth of shower cap .
Speaker 2Yeah well , I was just saying I said from from the , from the realization , but we're using 800 liters late averaging . Um , water's not expensive . Water's really cheap . No matter put it up 30% , it's really cheap . Considering without it you die . It's really cheap , it's a must have , which is why it's cheap . Because it's in Ireland , they don't charge . I think they've just started to bring that in . Don't charge for water because they believe it's in Ireland , but I'm charged . I think they've just started to bring that in . Yeah , don't charge for water because they believe it's a basic human need .
Speaker 1Human yeah .
Speaker 2So we had that . So during the pandemic , stuck at home as everyone was all the kids back from uni and what have you , and just listening to torrents of water above our kitchen area because you know we've got two showers sitting above us and going on for ages and ages and you start to realise . You know A it was annoying . But also we were having cold showers and we've got a tank which we've got to have 300 litres of hot water in that tank . You know that's a lot of water .
Speaker 2And one , you know , our , my oldest stepdaughter , she , she was shit awful , she would be in there and you know if anyone wants to take any credit for shower cabbage frayer , because she got me on this and we were banging on all . My wife was up there banging out a shower , you know , and she'd run out of hot water and she'd come out quite sheepishly . So I'm thinking , okay , psychologically , what can I do ? How can I do something which actually makes people not turn it off , not turn it cold , because some people would do that as a parent , you're going and shut off the hot , yeah , yeah . And all of a sudden , yeah , it's blasted cold water on someone . All you're going to do is create mayhem , yeah . So you're trying to think of how can we go back , because you can't take stuff away from people , we can't go like we can have a tin bath in the kitchen and we're all going to shit our butts .
Speaker 1Yeah , exactly , we'll put an outside toilet .
Speaker 2Now you in the garden yeah , exactly , we'll put an outside toilet . Yeah , now you'll realize how precious things are . Yeah , so you can't revert back to how it was . But you're trying to think , well , how can , how can we do something ? And I was thinking if I could simulate that , if I could simulate the effect of them running out of water before it actually did run out , psychologically they're going to come out a bit sheepish because I've used all the hot water , yeah , and it it's a very gradual fade , so it's not .
Birth of Showercap: An Engineer's Solution
Speaker 2It's not as though you can't finish what you're doing . And even at the end of a fade , the temperature is still only about 35 , 34 degrees so it's not cold yeah it .
Speaker 2You know you could carry on showering if you wanted to , but you wouldn't stay in it . But you wouldn't because it's not yeah . No , and that's really where my thought process went , and it took a couple of years after that 22 , but I sort of I said to Nicola , my wife , I said you know , I've got this idea .
Speaker 1So had this been playing on your mind ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I've been rolling and rolling with it , trying to think how can you turn back the clock ? I had no clue , but it was 70% , mid-80s to now , an uplift of all to use , and there were multiple reasons for that , but predominantly I knew it had gone up now .
Speaker 1Yeah , you know , an uplift of all to use and there are multiple reasons for that , but you know predominantly .
Speaker 2I knew it gone up because I know as a child we never used that much yeah so you know that's happening , and if that's happening in my home , that's happening everywhere , and it wasn't until I put the paint in because I couldn't talk to anybody .
Speaker 2Nicola knew about it , none of the kids knew about it , so I had to then do some sketches , come up with a means of doing it . Yeah , luckily from my background , because that's what I'm an engineer . So I sort of came up with an idea . I was thinking , well , how can I control this ? And I was thinking about lights on a car . You know dipped and you can adjust them . So it's a stepper motor , or ?
Speaker 2something . Okay , if I put a stepper motor on , 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 we came up with the paint and we put it in . And we did searches , global searches , and I was really quite surprised that nobody had come up with a controlled depletion of hot water over time . There's some systems out there that do step depletions . They just sort of turn off a valve and it'll drop , so it's quite a rapid drop . There's another one out there that will squirt off a valve and it'll drop , so it's quite a rapid drop . Or there's another one out there but squirt cold water and it'll carry on .
Speaker 1yeah , so there's like a warning , I guess .
Speaker 2Right , you've been in the shower now for four minutes yeah , and you just squirt a bit of cold water on you so you get a shot , but then it would revert back and carry on . Yeah , you know there's others . You know there's other things out there , you know egg timers on the wall and things like that , anything which hasn't got a sensory nudge .
Speaker 2To be perfectly honest , it doesn't . If it worked , we wouldn't be where we are . If anyone had come up with something that worked , we wouldn't be having this conversation . The issue we're faced with now is you need it everywhere ? It's how do you scale this thing to make that ? The issue we're faced with now is you need it everywhere ? It's how do you scale this thing to make that difference ?
Speaker 2And the other factor that I had with Freya she was at uni and she confessed once I knew the patent was in and I could talk to someone . I spoke to her about it and I said why I came up with this idea . And it was her that instilled it . I sort of said to her do you go ? Is the shower a safe place for you ? And she said no , but once she's in 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 in there until you sort of hop or drop . And she said she was doing that at uni . Yeah , she had a little en suite in her room and she would literally sit or stand in the shower 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 which is mapping everybody and we put on data collection so you can see your traits , actually you could identify potential vulnerable young adults .
Speaker 2So , then you've got the opportunity for that institution to put some safeguarding in to actually go and talk to those kids , because I had a long chat with Surrey University and they're looking at putting this in and it's shocking when they're putting what they call jail showers . They're putting in these showers that don't have a shower head protruding . It's embedded in the actual thing and and it's shocking when they're doing that , so the student hasn't got anywhere to hang themselves . Wow , and the government won't issue statistics on how many suicides happen in universities .
Speaker 1Jesus , yeah , they're putting in , they're putting this , this stuff in to prevent that from happening in that environment , so it's as much of a problem that the universities are having to step in , but no one knows about it no one knows about it knows about it .
Speaker 2They won't issue statistics on it . Safeguarding was another major thing that I feel . The system offers that sort of environment plus saving a shed load of money . So there was a lot of emotive reasons behind it as well and , yeah , it's evolved from that really .
Speaker 1Yeah , so from my knowledge , shower cap is a valve and it's also linked to an application , so is that right ?
Speaker 2It started off just being a bit of a shower valve . Yeah , that was the mechanical way , a cheap way of me gaining control of the whole . To feed to a shower valve . Yeah , that was the mechanical way , a cheap way of me um , gaining control of the hot water feed to a shower . So it's a firm , static , controlled shower and you know , the hot water is mixed in that firm , static , controlled shower with cold and you've got an output . So , for example , say , say , the output temperature is 40 degrees , so that's happening at the shower head . Our intervention is downstream of that and all we're doing is it's just a mixer valve , effectively , but we're controlling it because we've got sensors , so flow meters and thermal couples linked with that , so we can then control the temperature of the water then feeding into the hot . So by after a length of time whichever set either off a for mobile apple we will take control of that hot water temperature and we'll bring it down to about 40 degrees yeah and then after that we know .
Speaker 2Then we don't know what the output temperature of our shower is because we don't know what I've got it set to .
Speaker 2But we know it's not going to be a lot more than 40 42 degrees so we bring , we start delivering hot water to that shower , so to say , a controlled shower at that temperature , yeah . And then once we reach the shower time whether it's five minutes , six minutes , whatever it might be very gradually we start to reduce that hot water temperature and it's over about 40 seconds and it's only dropping by sort of half a degree of time .
Speaker 2It's very gradual and it just fades it and that's . That's the valve on the on the plate , and I also paint . I painted the depletion of hot water over time . So if you were aqua laser or anybody else , with a with a , a digital shower .
Speaker 2You could do this , yeah , but they'd have to license it , because I've I've patented the actual fade , not the valve . I haven't painted a valve , the valve is a valve . Anyone could take that valve , reverse engineer it , make a little change , and they've got that . It's not the valve , I've painted it's it's , it's the fade okay so we've got that .
Speaker 2But when we started , when I started looking at that , we started looking at the control of it . To put it in a big building you'd need this sort of what I'd call smart box and it needs to talk to all the others . So you've got a hotel with 200 rooms . You'd have 200 of these devices and then each one effectively has got a smart meter and they're all talking to each other other and they're sending that information up to the cloud . So if you've got control like that , you thought , well , we'll just put a sensor , so a flow meter and a foam cup on hot , total hot in total cold in . So now not only have we got control of the shower , we know every all the water that goes into that room , yeah , and we can identify short flush , long flush , toilet , we can identify bath , we can identify sink . So you've now got a full mapping of what's going on . Now , ethically , you go . You can't really be watching someone you know , in their bathroom .
Speaker 1So we lag that an hour .
Speaker 2We don't , we don't provide that information to anyone who's monitoring life . Yeah . But what you're able to do then is we can get statistics off and it will say what the ratio of long flush to short flush toilets are . Yeah , and you'll be amazed at how much more water is used , and the ratio should be probably four to one , if I'm being honest you know from they're not , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2So then you can start putting little nudges in the room , whatever they're saying , do you realise ? And then if people start to adopt that then you can start putting some figures back in , say , you know , with your help , you realise we've saved a thousand litres a week . Or whatever it might be , so you can start engaging with people , and I think that's really the key . It's not education , it's just information , it's allowing someone to feel good about it . You know , you know we're doing the right thing here .
Speaker 1Yeah , I guess as well , with sustainability in everything , such a key thing at the moment sustainable energy , sustainable plastics we can't have plastic straws , et cetera . We've got to be sustainable . This should be taken as seriously as that .
Speaker 2I think my hope is and this was always my hope is that if we can put this into universities , we can gamify it , because um colorado state university will do the marketing campaign on our kit , on what we were doing , and they canvassed everybody there and it was yeah , I don't really want you to monitor or change my shower , but what do I get out of it ? And if you can reverse it , so you give people something back . So if they want a mobile app or whatever and you've got a target say , if you can maintain this level of use per day over a week , you'll get a QR code which says you can go into I don't know , your local McDonald's or whatever or coffee shop and get a free coffee .
Speaker 2It gives something back and so they're getting something for it . Because the thing is with universities , the students aren't paying for that water , they're paying for their rooms , so there's no incentive , but then that's true of anyone living within somebody else's home . There's no incentive financially for do it . Yeah , and even then , you know , when you think financial sort of incentives , the bill comes in once a year . You can forget about it till the next one comes in . Really , yeah , um , so it's trying to work out a way of of engaging , but in a in a friendly way yeah , yeah , and not imposing something on somebody yeah yeah , um , and really that that's .
Speaker 2That's the hope . The hope is that once you do that and you engage with those , those young adults they remember it . But also , if they start thinking about water , maybe they'll start thinking about other things yeah , but it's , it's happening , you know this resell of old clothes and all this recycling .
Speaker 2It's not , it's about using things , it's about you know , it's always this adage , isn't it ? One person's waste is somebody else's . Yeah , yeah , yeah . So I think we've just got to get back into it saying , okay , don't just throw stuff away because somebody else will want that stuff away because somebody else will want that .
Speaker 1Do you think it's important to give , like this information that you've got ? Do you think it's important to give this to the younger generation ? Do you think it's really important ? And I that that's what I sort of see with this is I would be quite interested to know how much water is being used not to turn it off , not to say we can't shower .
Speaker 1If you , if you need to wash your hair and you've got a lot of hair and you want to wash it and condition it , etc . You might need slightly longer , but I'm actually really interested to see . I would be very interested to understand what is used in the water and why our bill should be double what they recommend the average should be , and that's information that I'd quite like to know .
Speaker 2I think you do what I did . If you've got a meter out on the road when I was at home , you'd go and watch that meter and if it's moving you've got a leak . But there's always that your first thought is there must be a leak and that's a leak past your meter , so it's between your house and you . They want to roll out smart meters . This is what the government believe is going to make a big difference is to roll out smart metering . Um , and in a way , potentially some people might . But then we've a lot . Of us have already got smart electric meters , but mine's in my garage .
Speaker 2I don't look at it because I can't . You know we've all got LED lights now . We've all . You know . The reduction on energy use has come down a lot and it's , but the bills haven't . Funny enough , my bills are predominantly . A lot , especially in the winter months , is heating water . Yeah , you know , because we've done all the things . You know all the lights are LED . So you know , all the lights are LED , so we're not drawing off a huge amount on anything else .
Speaker 2So there is this big thing . But , yeah , you're right , we've got to come up with an app , with a mobile app which gives back . No one's going to download an app just to have a control of a shower . You know , it's got to be something . Ultimately , the ultimate would be that that's got your credentials , that's your , your auto footprint , on that app . So if you go anywhere , that's got a shower cap system . Yeah , um , whether it be the gym , whether it be you know , you know hotels around the world , or whether it be whatever you're doing , if you can go somewhere , that and and you just they know it's you instantly adopts your credentials . So it will set you shout on to what you want , the fade profile to what you want yeah and also then you accredit .
Speaker 2You're getting those credits , you're getting that feedback yeah yeah , so that's , that's the ultimate goal , but you know we're talking , yeah , a long way down the line . Even if we can scale this to death and we can have subs around the world and we can be producing in multiple regions , which is what we want to do , it's going to take a long time to get there .
Speaker 1A long time and a lot of money , I'd imagine . Yeah , well , you know ,
How Showercap Works: Technology Explained
Speaker 1but it's something that , like , I feel it's very , very important from having a conversation before we film this , from having conversations , from doing this research , to be able to have this conversation with you and not be like , so , steve , what's , uh , what's water to you , kind of thing , like it opened my eyes massively . I believe you piloted this in hotels and a few homes . What are the kind of results that you've seen in terms of liter saves , energy saving , because obviously I think there's a big stat that the majority , like you just said , the majority of carbon and energy bills is for heating water . And have you seen any behavioral shifts ? Obviously , you trialed it in your own home . Did you see a big behavioral shift with your daughters , with the people using it , right , um ?
Speaker 2we have got it trilling at the moment in a hotel um I'll move on to that in a minute because the big one that we've had um is in in my home . Um we put the system in in its infancy , so , um , I think it was beginning of 24 um we got it in in january , got it working but didn't interrupt . Didn't um use it for engaging on the showers ?
Speaker 2It was really there for a trial to test out the meshing , because all the devices meshed to each other . So we were testing that and uplift to the cloud and we were looking at data consumption and all that . So we were looking at all those stats , but we were obviously we weren't monitoring what was going on . So you were seeing these trends From what we were doing . Our shower outputs were 12 litres .
Speaker 2So you know , over a period of time I thought , okay , I'm going to buy new shower heads because choking them down doesn't work . Because you've got a big shower head . If you reduce the flow to it , it blocks the report . It comes out and it's not . You lose the pressure . So buy a slightly smaller head and you still get that feel of pressure . So you buy a shower head which says , oh , this delivers 8 litres when you put it on your system and because you've got a pressurised system and you're delivering that volume of water , no , it doesn't . So that's another good thing about measuring it , because you go , no , it doesn't . So you still have to use a bit of a choking to actually get it down to a roughly about the nine liters . So we did that and then um introduced the app . We had a test flight so gave the app to especially for the oldest one , because she was .
Speaker 2Yeah , she was still using a colossal mat water , and so to you know , this is , this is happening , um , my wife and I were away , and so it was only the kids were at home and the water usage went up .
Speaker 2It's almost like you know cats away and you know which is bizarre , when I know damn well we're monitoring it . 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 liters free per day . Yeah , after that , for every liter , I'm going to charge you three pence . Um , now , a bottle of water a liter is 30p , so it was a tenth , but it was just this really small monetary value , yeah and I said , oh , you can , you can adopt the apps .
Speaker 2so anyways , set the apps , yeah , and from now on that time on her shower times were actually she saved 25 on reduction of the shower output and then , but she was another 25 on time , so it almost a 50% saving in her water and energy use just by adopting what we've got . And then overall and the sort of the thing that really hit home , I've got our previous water bill , so three years running the prior service being adopted in average was 700 litres and it was pretty constant . It was up and down maybe six , nine five but it was 700 liters a day .
Speaker 2Since everyone's adopted what , we've got a home and I've set the shower times and everything's . You know hunky-dory it's gone from that down to 500 . We say 30 percent water and energy costs just by , and they're not restricted massively . Five , six minutes still decent long showers , sometimes not four minutes , which is government aim , yeah , um .
Speaker 2But also I think there's a , an awareness , yeah , so it's not just saying you know , should we have a bath ? You know , should we know , do I really need to have a shower ? Or , if I have a shower , should I have a quick one ? Yeah , so I think there's more to it than just you know . Oh , we've restricted your shower time so we've saved 30% , but we have saved , so we're now down to sub 500 liters a day . Everyone's still clean , everyone's the same people at home , so nothing's changed apart from what we've done . So that's the biggest stat . And that's when I sat him down when the bill came through , because I was waiting for it .
Speaker 2It came through and we're over over dinner and I just said you know , this is what's happening and they looked , they said we haven't done anything , and that's literally what I said , but we haven't done anything yeah , if you have you've , you've changed your habit .
Speaker 2Yeah , and they couldn't . You know , that was that realization , but Liam Young one . He said we can't relate water , we can't relate liters , we don't know what it is . So I went and bought 96 litres of bottled water and stacked them in the shower . I said that's a nine-minute shower , yeah , and took some pictures of that . But there's no correlation between that . And I think I've started to use weight . Okay , because water's sold by cubic metre , which again , people don't't understand . But that weighs a ton . It's a ton in weight of water yeah so maybe you know it's tonnage more .
Speaker 2I don't know where the correlation is , but that was the biggest you know revelation where they just but we've done 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 accepted norm . You know , you get this general fade , but freya's guys , she was at seven minutes but she might still spend eight minutes in the shower because you don't have to evacuate the shower straight away .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , it's not like doing an ice bucket challenge , no no . You're five minutes up . You've got an ice bucket challenge coming .
Speaker 2There's no Wim Hof or anything . I'm just doing that With the hotel . We've recently put a pilot project into Sandman Signature in Calde , gatwick and we've got a floor there . So we've got the third floor . They always stack from the ground upwards so we've got quite good occupancy rates . They were very anti-engaging with the guests . They wanted it for the data collection , they wanted to see what was going on and all that sort of thing .
Speaker 2And being an older building it was quite a task to get these in . The way it works in hotels is between each room in a hallway you get like a cupboard and it's called a riser and in that riser you've got all the pipe work and you've got the electrics . So that's where we put our kit . So we don't have to get into a room , we don't disturb anything in a room , we don't rip a wall down . You put the kit in the riser , in the hallway . And in a modern hotel it would be quite easy . They should have shut-off valves so they can isolate each room . So if they've got a problem problem , they can just isolate that room with a little lever valve , isolate that chopping of the pipe works . Quite a simple plumbing job to put stuff in , um , electrical feed and you're away .
Speaker 2Their buildings are older than that , so there was a bit more work to be done , but their guys did 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 was the end of april , may time , um . But the interesting thing was that we we could see the mapping of the building , because once you've got , it's almost like you're , you're seeing that building come alive . It's like the blood . Yeah , it's flowing , so you can see temperatures , you can see all these things so straight away .
Speaker 2Although we only had 20 rooms out of 152 , we could see traits , we could see issues of water delivery . I mean , these risers should rotate their water so they flow around and they go back to the tanks and they keep flowing around and and that's so you can deliver hot water to a room almost instantly . You've only got the length of pipe from that riser into the room , yeah , and if you imagine at home , if you start your shower up , you have to wait 30 , 40 seconds before the water gets from wherever the source is , whether it's a boiler or whether it's a tank . If you imagine a hotel and the tanks are on the ceiling , you know , up in the top , or they're in underground in a basement . If you had to wait for that water to get from there to the room , yeah , you'd go minutes , it would be a long time .
Speaker 2But we identified that they've got some issues with some of their risers . They weren't rotating because , again , as you said , the time it's taking for that hot water to be delivered was longer . So that was something which I didn't expect . We weren't expecting that to come back . We thought delivery would have been instant . So you'll start now looking not just at what you can do for the environment . You're looking at the chief engineer . You're looking at what can you do for the engineers . And way back I spoke to a chief engineer , of another hotel group actually , and he said could you tell me the temperatures going in and out of the room , which ?
Speaker 1got me thinking about putting on the sensors to the hot and cold .
Speaker 2He 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 cold and the hot . So they don't know if they've got a leak back issue . They don't know if a cold's leaking back into the hot until it's too late . So he was very keen on that element of it . He wanted to know whether the hot water temperature delivered into the room is the right temperature , because this leads on to a risk of legionella . So then you've got a legionella risk . So you're then monitoring temperatures . You're watching flow dormancy
Hotel Implementation and Surprising Benefits
Speaker 2yeah , you can't leave water .
Speaker 2It's got to be below 20 degrees or above 50 . Yeah , anything in between that . If you leave in a long enough for 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 whole mapping and the other thing that came out of this we were looking at some of the abuse . Can I use abuse as the right word ? Of course you can . Of course you can . It's quite notorious that people use the shower to steam their clothes , so they will hang the clothes along the rail , turn the shower on , shut the door and forget about it . Yeah , so that can be any length of time We've seen 300 , 400 litres used in a single , and it doesn't work .
Speaker 1It doesn't work .
Speaker 2The problem being and I'm not sure whether people think a hotel is sort of miraculously different to a home- yeah .
Speaker 2But they've got two 1,400 litre hot water tanks at this particular hotel . So that's 2,800 litres total hot water in a roof space to deliver water to 152 rooms . Well , if you've got five or six rooms running 300 litres of water off and we're mapping the water temperature , we can see the depletion of their hot water delivery temperatures . So you can see this depletion and what's happening is the quicker you draw that whole water off , the tank's reducing . You're putting cold water in , so the water tank temperatures drop in , yeah , which exasperates the issue , because then your your thermostat , your valve , is shutting down the cold , putting in more hot to maintain temperature , so you get this compounding effect .
Speaker 2And what we discovered was those people doing that were depriving other people of hot water . You actually had to . You know people having to have cold showers , yeah , yeah . So ethically it shifted the issue , because what we've had from some really leading brands of hotels they wanted , they wanted to put this in , they wanted to put it into two hotels , they wanted to put it into one in leeds and the ball said we can't do this , we can't be the first , because we're monitoring this and we're going to interact with this . So they've , they're on the sidelines watching us , as is a load of other hotels watching this trial Sandman having us in . We picked this up within three days of the system being live , but for them to say it's not ethical to restrict someone's water it's really not ethical to have
Speaker 2someone pay for a room and not deliver hot water to them . So you're shifting that paradigm , you're shifting that behaviour to say , actually , as an institution , as a supplier to these people , you actually have a duty of care to everybody . So now they want to put the fade on . So we're literally only just starting , it's over . We're going to introduce a fade on . So we're literally only just starting , it's over . Okay , we're going to introduce a fade time . Yeah . So on that floor we're going to say look , after x many minutes , we're going to fade to temperature . Now it ?
Speaker 2It helps in multiple ways because the engineers are saying , if we can stop people steaming their clothes , and you go , have you got clothes steamers ? And a GM said , well , no , but actually 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 have some clothes steamers and you put a note in a room to say , look , if you want to steam your clothes , contact reception will lend you one for now . So you're setting that . Look , if you want to see me close , contact reception will lend you one for now .
Speaker 2So you're almost , you're setting that oh , you know we're doing that , yeah . So you're actually making people aware that you actually know people are doing that . For a start , yeah . But the other thing if they do do that and then you fade the temperature down to 35 degrees A , it doesn't sting . Yeah .
Speaker 2But also you're not depleting the hot water tank anymore For the other guests , for the other guests . So it's sort of this win-win . So you're sort of saying , well , our system doesn't just measure the water , we've actually got a means of you taking some control back of what people are doing within your building . Because if they deplete your tanks , the amount of energy you have to put from your boilers .
Speaker 1To fill that back up .
Speaker 2To back it back up again is huge .
Speaker 1And we had a situation over the last couple of days where we could see all the temps dropping .
Speaker 2So we pulled contacts their engineers and said you know your temps are dropping Right . Ok , get up in a plant room have a look . One of the boilers tripped out so we knew their delivery temperature was way down . So one of those tanks , one of those borders wasn't working yeah , so again you , you're , you're , it's , it's having this closed loop .
Speaker 2It's always this , this system of not only just one thing and this is something we've had to do 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 .
Speaker 2We've got to rag the hell out of this . What else can we do ? What else can we offer as a by-product ? Not just controlling a shower , because just doing that it wouldn't justify the expense of putting the key , yeah , but you start adding in all these other things and all of a sudden you've got this rounded proposition where people like that would do that and we , we need that . We need those as paying customers . If you like those hotels because they can see all the benefits , yeah , to then be able to adapt it and use it for housing and use it for universities . They can't afford the same . They haven't got these transient guests who are paying for their nightly stays . They've got students . They've got restrictions on how much they can charge the students , so they're under the cosh , basically . So you've got to have a segmented market . You've got to look at what benefits you have , what you can give yeah .
Speaker 2What would you charge for that ? But it's like anything , nothing works unless it pays for itself , and I think that's the other thing about this sustainability thing . It's having this fantastic idea of saying we're going to hit net zero by 2030 with no coherent plan , how you're going to do that without actually having a financial going to do that , yeah , without actually doing , having a financial model to achieve that , yeah , and everything else that goes along with that is it's just nonsense . You're just .
Speaker 2you're just making a statement , yeah but , yeah , like in an ideal world yeah yeah , be carbon neutral by 2030 or whatever it is in reality it's not gonna it's not gonna happen . Same thing about's not going to happen . Same thing about building . You know , building all these homes , millions of homes . It's not going to happen . It can't happen because it's not for the want of trying . It just can't happen . We haven't got the resource to do it .
Speaker 1I suppose as well , though for the hotels , if they can . I wouldn't be opposed to a hotel saying by the way , we've limited your shower to seven minutes , you can opt out of this by doing this , but you're not saving the planet or you're not , et cetera . I wouldn't be opposed to that . I would probably actually quite like that , because it shows that they're doing stuff . And then also , on the back of that , if people aren't , I'd imagine in a hotel , I'm gonna turn the shower on , then I'm gonna go in the room , hold on the phone's rung . Yeah , I'm gonna have a phone call . The shower's still running . I'd imagine that happens . That's the kind of thing I can see that happens . And then at the end of someone's stay without not I don't know , this is kind of just me in my head going mad , when they get their bill , they get a printout of how much water they used .
Speaker 2I think that's another model that you could use , especially on the more budget hotels , a bit like Premier Inn or whatever like that , where you could go . Your allocation is X . We're on this programme , we've got this , we're trying to save . This is our mantra , and the big problem they've got these guys is they're having to transition from gas to electric . Oh are they ? Yeah , for net zero . So they know their heating water costs are going to go up through the roof . Yeah .
Speaker 2So they've now got to work out how they're going to do that and also how are they going to go up through the roof ? Yeah , so they've now got to work out how they're going to do that and also how are they going to control their peak demand , which is what we were talking about a minute ago . You know , it's like saying , well , if everyone's abusing it during peak demands , between six and eight in the morning , whatever it is , whenever that high is , they've got to be able to supply that . And moving to heat pumps , moving to what we call more sustainable heating you know electric is far more expensive than gas , but obviously you don't get the emissions . So they're caught between this rock and a hard place .
Speaker 2They know they've got to do something , and it's really in a way , I suppose , what we're seeing and the pain we're suffering at the moment is we're sort of in front of a curve . Yeah . So we've come up with a system , we've come up with something .
Speaker 1We've put a lot of money into it yeah .
Speaker 2But 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 I was at a do in . London . I can't remember what he was talking about . I think it was hockey and ice hockey , and the skill is to be where the putt's going to end up .
Speaker 2Yeah , and that's really my hope is that we've positioned ourselves in front of it . We've positioned ourselves and we're going to develop it to a stage where , once that's delivered to us , I actually everyone wakes up to the fact that we've got to do something . We've already there , we've already got a solution . Yeah , um , and that's all the only thing we can hope , because otherwise , all the hard work and all the pain and you know the financial stress that is put on us , it's the only thing that eventually will be be worthwhile , and it's not about the financial gain . I never did this , especially at my age I didn't do it .
Speaker 2Yeah , for the financial gain I had got other businesses and it was . You know I was winding down , but it's , it would be nice to leave a legacy it's a legacy part of it . I'm even now I'm not overly bothered about you know that sort of it , but actually to actually go , yeah , well , that was good we did something , we did something right .
Speaker 1You know , yeah doing the right thing , I think you , you came up with an idea , and the difference between you and probably other people is they didn't push it through . Um , and you're running with it , and you're running with it to your own , with your own , like you said before . We started filming like it's uh , it's been a roller coaster of a ride , but you're doing it and you stuck it through yeah , it's a massive roller coaster .
Speaker 2I 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 , you know you go from these massive highs and lows . You don't business . It doesn't seem to be any middle ground . You either you know you're either up or you're really down um , not not down in depressive state , but that's sort of you to then motivate yourself to actually keep keep going and actually still believe in it yeah , because you just keep hitting these these walls and you hit these setbacks or something goes wrong or you know the system comes offline or it drops down or you go and you feel this other problem you've got with electronics .
Speaker 2So there's always other things , mechanical side of it . Because of my background and because I'm an engineer and because I've got production out in china and we do stuff out there , that I nailed that in months , yeah it , that wasn't , that wasn't a problem to me . The frustration to me is the electronic side of it . It's taken years longer , yeah , yeah . And and that tech side , yeah , I didn't appreciate that and that was a naivety on my part .
Speaker 2Yeah , 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 about it , no one's ever done this before . No one's ever you know , this is new .
Speaker 2There's not a model that you can look at . No , no model you can't look at . No , no , there's elements of it . You know , obviously , putting data 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 all those together and then you've got to try and break out what is what .
Speaker 2Yeah , so , um , it's , it has been a , it's been a learning curve for me a massive learning curve and I've had to my impatience of wanting to get it done and nail it . I've had to take a back seat . But also , what it's also done is the world's not ready for it . The investors aren't ready for it . Water is notoriously bad for any investment . People won't invest in water . If you go to any vc or something and you talk about water , again , I'm not interested because the return of investment is so slow . Yeah , because the cost of it is so slow .
Speaker 1Yeah , 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 do something .
Speaker 2Yeah , what they're doing we were a bit again . Uk are lagging a little bit on this . But water rebates or water credits , actually the water saved , the value of the water saved , is 10 times what the cost of it is being delivered . So especially , you know , building around the southeast Cambridge and all that water neutrality , they can't build unless they can prove but we're not going to extract more water for those homes now we know , and so does the local councils , and so does everyone else know that's greenwashing because they've got no means of reducing the used water in current properties and high users with hotels or industry , so without the ability to reduce the use .
Speaker 2So then you end up with a credit . So you end up with oh , we've saved X , many thousand litres . Therefore those credits can be sold to a developer to then develop . So it's almost a kickback . So you save on your bill . But you'll say you get money back from what you've saved . And until those dots are lined up and that system is in place so that there is this real incentive for people to save , yeah .
Speaker 2And there's value added to that . And also then you've also got something which you can truly measure and say , yes , we are neutral . And actually what we want to do is not become neutral . It's got to become the other way . We've got to start to reduce consumption . So we refill in our aquifer so we're building up our water table . Um , we know we're near as bad . I mean , you've got beijing who's sinking . You've got um mexico city's sinking because they've taken six fractures so much water out the ground it's actually going down really , yeah , um , and you know china as as a , as a model , if you like .
Speaker 2They've spent 85 billion us dollars on a overground sort of aquifer , if you want to call it that , to get water from southern china up to beijing so it's a massive , it's huge if you , if you want to google , that it's massive and it's not widely talked about because , um , I only know that through my contacts within china and the guys that are looking at setting up the china company , um , I've got pictures of this thing . It's huge and even in it's going through regions , which is which are prone to earthquake .
Speaker 2But this is a massive overground reservoir , or it's not a reservoir , but it's pumping water from one end of the country up to the other . Now you don't do that unless you've got a problem , and they've had lots of unrestricted boring holes . So that's how agriculture is . They bore holes and extract water from the ground . So it's extracting it from the aquifer , but the tables drop so much they can't get pumps powerful enough to get it out the ground , and when it is , it's so contaminated they can't use it .
Speaker 2So this is what's happening all over , yeah , and this stuff that you just don't think about is um , we're , we're talking . I've got a meeting actually later on with a hotel group in um , dubai , dubai of using desalinated water okay now that's .
Speaker 3And now going back to our original question why don't people worry ?
Speaker 2because people look at it and I look at the earth and they look at all this water and they go well , we'll just desalinate it , yeah , so they instantly think there's a technology solution for this . We don't have to worry because someone will come up with a solution . Yeah .
Speaker 2And desalination , yes , is going to play a part , but these plants are huge and it makes that country 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 they can't disalinate all of a sudden , yeah , they are , they're in big trouble .
Speaker 2So at the moment you buy to Salinas and they're pumping water back into the ground to refill their aquifers because they've depleted them so much because mass expansion these cities are growing massively so they're having to pump water back into the ground . So it's not just going to actual use , they're putting it there as a reserve and I think they've only got about 45 days of reserve . That's all they've got . So if something happened to their plants , they either be taken out by , you know cyber attack .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah anything , any , any future war will be over water , and the first thing now here , if you're relying on anything like that , is those places yeah I take them out and that country be on its knees in minutes .
Speaker 2It wouldn't even take long . Yeah , um , not different as china with this water supply . Go out there . You know it's vulnerable , it makes them vulnerable and it's all about . If you didn't use so much and you actually used the natural cycle and you had it to replenish , you could say so . That's why we're saying these rebates or these credits are so important , because when you start looking at that and you start , it's like these mega reservoirs they're looking at building and how many billions of 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 maybe something else , but that's not going to help us now .
Speaker 2No , but also , if you could cut down if we could cut down 20% of our water use because we're just thinking about it and using it differently , so not suffering at all ? No , it's just indulgence . Yeah , using it differently , so not suffering at all no , it's just indulgence . Yeah , if you can cut that down all of a sudden you've got that additional money that they could use . And I agree with what you've put up before , it's that there needs to be mass regulation . There needs to be much better measurement of what those companies have got to achieve before they start paying out dividends , before they start using that money for anywhere else . They've got to hit and achieve true , measurable sort of milestones and actually do it not talk about it , but do it .
Speaker 1Yeah , and that's the thing , and not have roads leaking for six years in the same place .
Speaker 2Again , I don't want to get into this and there's probably companies out there already doing this . We can measure all the water in a building . Yeah , there's nothing stopping anyone putting similar sort of devices or they'd be a lot bigger and they could be working purely off of it . Doesn't have to be into the water system , they could be on it , but they could be a bit more sophisticated . If you put these , these measuring devices , these metering a period periods down any feed of water yeah and you had this around the country .
Speaker 2So all of a sudden you've got this mapping of water flow . You know the volume of water passing . What if the volume coming out of the other one is less ? You know where the leak is yeah , you know you , it doesn't take rocket science to work out how they could use ai . It's not really ai , because you're not actually trying to invent anything all you're doing is monitoring yeah , and analyzing flow patterns yeah and it's yeah , it's simple .
Speaker 2You know , x equals one and if it doesn't , we've got a problem there and it wouldn't take them that 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 of infrastructure as well , so they can . They can pinpoint and know exactly where to send their team . All right , it might be a mile length , whatever . However , each station needs these devices , but I can see that being definitely a way to go and probably someone's working on that . I hope they are .
Speaker 2Yeah , you know it should be a smart cities or smart countries . We've got the technology . Yeah , employ it and do it , because you know you're saving awful lot of money an awful lot of time .
Speaker 1Yeah , it's , um , it's . I don't want to . Obviously , we've covered quite a lot of the stuff here , just organically and like we . We just spoke about the mega reservoirs 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 years and years and billions of pounds away . Um , but something as not simple as shower cap . I'm not saying shower cap simple , but what I'm saying is a simple resolution to trying to reduce . Like you said , you've basically saved 30% on your water use in your home . Yeah , if everybody did that .
Speaker 2Yeah , the landscape changes overnight , but we can't to scale what we're doing , but
Measuring Impact: Real-World Results
Speaker 2somehow in conjunction with it being in certain places . So if it touches someone or it touches a family member , who can go back and do it ? Don't do that . Do you realise it's really opening up this awareness ? Think about it , don't just do it , think about it .
Speaker 1if we't just do it , think about it . Yeah .
Speaker 2But if we can do that , behavioural change can make a difference overnight . Yeah . But it's how do you get mass behavioural change ? I think that's Education , that's the big one .
Speaker 1Yeah , hopefully , hopefully , but it's difficult because again as I said to you earlier on , you adapt to your environment , so you might know it , but when you stand in that shower , especially as a youngster , and you zone out and you start thinking about all these airy fairy stuff , whatever that going on about , whatever that doing .
Speaker 2Yeah , all of a sudden , 20 minutes , half an hour's gone by . Yeah , you do need that sensory notch , you need something a little bit extra , which is where I came up with what I did . But yeah , ideally we should be in every home . Yeah . We should be everywhere , we should be measuring stuff in every home . But then that model becomes more difficult because ours is a , it's a house model .
Speaker 2Actually . We're not actually selling the hardware . We're . You know we're putting it as a service . So there is , there is a cost up front , but the kit will always be owned by us , which means it's got a lifetime warranty . It never runs out , yeah . And then there's a subscription . So you this is how you know you got a subscription service so you can maintain it , you can deliver that service . When it gets to domestic , that becomes a little bit more difficult because , as I said , when you're offering a big institution , a big building , all these layers and layers and layers of advantages , all of a sudden , when you come down to domestic , it's a much smaller thing . So , as a company , we need the success of a business model from doing larger things to then afford to do .
Speaker 2B2C sales or do it to developers or do it to whatever . So you're going to drop . It's going to be a completely different financial model to do that . Yeah , and the unit , the way why it talks . It won't be meshing like ours or it'll be talking directly you know they might have a bluetooth thing that could adjust it it won't be as sophisticated
Speaker 2yeah , but but the you know , but it will still be doing the same thing . So , that is a future evolution of what we're doing , and the more successful the business , the quicker we can get to that , because it's needed .
Speaker 1So if you was to put it in a residential property , for example , what would you do ? Would you retrofit or would you fit it to the feeds into each bathroom ?
Speaker 2it depends on the size of the house and what's available if you're in a flat or if you're in a smaller property .
Speaker 2It's not even property like yours , if you've got one bathroom , or even if you've got one bathroom downstairs , toilet or whatever , it could go in the air and cold , it could come off a combi . So you , so you'd put it off of that , yeah , yeah , and then you'd have the cold , total water in . You could put so really generally , in an air-in cupboard would be the ideal place . Or say , straight off a combi boiler you could use it there and that would be doing the whole house . So , yes , you could put this into a normal home .
Speaker 2We would detect whether it was a shower because you set that in the parameters . So you know the flow output of a shower and if it goes over a certain length of time , right , that is a shower . Yeah , so you can distinguish that between that and the bath , the bath will run at a higher flow rate . So we , we can , we can take the fade off . Yeah , that this is a bath , this farmer , um , and you move on from there . The next evolution we're just working on at the moment is to put shuttle valves in , so electronic shuttle valves to the hot and cold . So again , you know , in a hotel scenario they can set a literage and if it goes over that and it's running a bath . It would turn the water off .
Speaker 1Because Flooding overflowing Premier Involve is up .
Speaker 2Could you do this ? Because they have a lot of issues . And funny enough . Not , it wasn't funny , but Sandman , one of their guests , decided to run a bath and then to go outside for a cigarette . So 450 litres later it took out that bath from the one below .
Speaker 2Yeah , um , so it was already on our radar and it's it's something we will put in . So there are companies out there that do leak detection and all this sort of stuff . But if we can monitor and we can 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-volt electronic shut-off valves which link back to our box , which we're already working on . So during the next year we will evolve those , we'll develop those and they could be retrofitted . Even if someone's got a system in , they could then put them in . Yeah , and we had a scenario and I think it was two days ago and it was two days ago uh , one shower run for just under two hours 960 liters , jesus christ .
Speaker 2So it happens now . Whatever someone as you got . He turned the shower on , probably got a phone call , went outside to take the phone call and just forgot about it . Went down to breakfast and forgot about it . But that was nearly 1,000 litres of water . Now , with our system , we're just preventing our alert . We all send an alert by email to the hotel and they would have to send someone up to actually check .
Speaker 2Someone could have slipped , someone could have had a heart attack . I mean , god is that , I guess have had heart attacks . We've had , we , you know . I guess you could have someone in the shower unconscious yeah so you're right , you you don't know , but if you can detect it , you can at least be aware of it , and you can intervene . But if we , if we shut that water off but also send the alert , it stops any more damage either to the property or to the environment or whatever .
Speaker 2But also then you can go and find out what the problem was and we got a little feedback on it To resolve an alert , they can select a reason or country type . So we want to start learning about behaviour . We want to start learning about what these events are . Yeah , and that's the only time we're going to start probably using some sort of machine learning or AI is to analyse behaviour traits . Yeah , so we can put out different nudges , different things to say and see what works for different people . There's a lot that can expand out of this . There's a lot that's got more . Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1I mean even people in the houses . If you put it on the boiler feed on a combi , most of the stuff feeds from it .
Speaker 1If you go on holiday , how many people I mean I know people have been on holiday and something's gone while they're on holiday and it can ruin a house yeah yeah , whereas if you've got a clever valve that's saying , right , something's been running here for longer than it normally would , let's shut it off on alert or alert them first , and then they can say , right , shut it off or alert them first and then they can say , right , shut it off From that . I think that's genius , yeah , well most systems out there do that .
Speaker 2At the moment , there are systems out there where we'll , do you know , a lot of insurance companies are putting these out . Okay , so you can get these shutoffs , these valves that will shut off . But what I'm saying on our system , we you know , because you , that can be an add-on , it makes it a more rounded system . So what we're doing is trying to cover off this stuff , and our system isn't right for every occasion . You know we can't do everything , no , but there are other systems out there which which can and I think I've , I've .
Speaker 2I speak to a lot of people within the water industry now and you're going . I'm not worried about our competition . I really aren't , because if you look at the scale of the market , you know the hotel rooms 17 odd million globally , 8.2 , I think it is now under the hospitality alliance . You know million rooms now , that's just those hotels .
Speaker 2That's before you get to manage building residential . We're never gonna be able to saturate that many , no , so we need other people doing other things , which we wouldn't . It wouldn't be cost-effective to put our system in certain buildings . We went and our team went and looked at Mid Sussex District Council because they were interested and their structure isn't right for us .
Speaker 2But they might be right for one of I wouldn't say our competitors , but our compatriots , somebody else who does the system , which is just total water in and has got a shuttle valve on it and is sending some form of monitoring that would work . Yeah .
Speaker 2So , I think ultimately , everybody's got to get their grown-up Big boy pants on Big boy pants on . Yeah , sit down and go . Look , you guys are really good at that . If we come across someone who says , can you put us in ? It's not right for us , but I can put you on because it doesn't matter who does it , it's being done . We've got to make a difference . We've got to do .
Speaker 1We've got to do something we're going to wrap this up , but there's a couple of things that I'd like to finish on . What is the one thing you wish that every single household in the UK truly understood about their water usage ? Obviously , we've covered a lot of this over the last hour and a bit . But if there was one thing that you wish everybody actually understood , Obviously we've covered a lot of this over the last hour and a bit .
Speaker 2But if there was one thing that you wish everybody actually understood , I think I go back to the immediate and something which is quite prominent at the moment , which is sewage spills , and all that sort of stuff , I think , irrespective of whether you feel you can afford your water or whether you're entitled to your water . I think it's the understanding that you've got to understand that that is contributing to another problem which is very immediate , which is this sewage side of things .
Speaker 2It's really hard because without anything in , like we've got now yeah to , to let your , your younger members of your family know , or anybody else said it's really difficult because it's habit and it's it's really hard . Yeah , yeah , people are banging on the door , but you can only bang on the door if you're there yeah and you , and you know it doesn't it's not great for people .
Speaker 2But if they can understand , I think , how much water is used in a shower because it goes down a plug hole . You don't see it , yeah , Whereas if you fill a bath up you've got some visual concept of how much is in there . Visual concept of how much is in there , but actually when you're running a shower , to think even a moderate flow rate , 10 minutes is 100 liters of water , so that's effectively you're not water off . Half full , third full bath yeah that that correlation maybe would be .
Speaker 2I didn't recognize that and I've had that a lot . Where people go what a shower uses more than a bath , yeah , yeah , yeah , a lot of the time it's using more than you're using a bath . Yeah , you can , you can , you know you can own a bath for an hour . Yeah , you know . If you want to chillax , have a bath , bath , yeah , if you've got one , but if not , you know you've got to realise that , basically , if you're spending that long in a shower , it's indulgent , yeah , yeah , and it's having an impact on the environment and on your costs .
Speaker 2It's not the water costs , it's the heating of that water .
Speaker 1It's the heating of the costs . Yeah , yeah , yeah , of course . So for someone listening who wants to live a bit more mindfully about their water consumption , where can they start ? What can they start to do ?
Speaker 2I think really that is it . We've got a number of , we've got quite a lot of investors . Actually , a lot of family and friends and associates have invested in shower caps and it's quite strange that they haven't got any of our kit in . No , but they're already changing their behaviour at home because they're aware . Yeah .
Speaker 2Because they're seeing the posts , they're seeing the things that are coming out and we're trying not to make it too doom and gloom . You know there's this too much bad press out there at the moment . You're trying to keep it as light as possible yeah but yeah , if people just a little bit more aware and I think that's that goes across everything , doesn't it ? It's like when you're buying your food shop , don't overbuy , because it's going to end up in a bin yeah yeah you , yeah you know we don't need that .
Speaker 2It ends up , you know .
Speaker 1And that's a very similar situation to water . Don't overindulge , because it's only ending up in a bin .
Speaker 2Exactly . I mean , there's this adage oh , it goes back into the cycle , which is why I'm saying about okay , think about what it's doing when it overfills and it ends going into the rivers .
Speaker 1It's going into the seas .
Speaker 2You don't mind about the state of the seas and the rivers . But you've got to think back to actually , can I make a difference ? And you can , because our systems are overrun .
Speaker 1They can't cope .
Speaker 2So this is what I was saying about these mega reservoirs . It's all very well , what's going to happen to our water .
Speaker 1What are they ?
Speaker 2doing about , you know , marrying that up to treatment plants .
The Future of Water Conservation
Speaker 2Oh , we're just going to pump more and more sewage in the sea . Horrible statistic globally . But 80% of sewage ends up in the sea , untreated , globally 80% .
Speaker 1Wow , that's incredible , and most of it is from countries that don't have tree implants .
Speaker 2Yeah , but we're as guilty . So there is this knock-on that people don't associate water with , and even you know countries that have got an abundance of water . Yeah .
Speaker 2When they're building these mega cities . You know countries that have got an abundance of water . Yeah , when they're building these , these mega cities , um , you know whether it's toronto , whatever , wherever you go on the metropolis of people , you've got to deal with the waste and and that is you know if you've got lakes and whatever . Stop using as much the quickest way we can change the planet , the quickest way we can become sustainable , is to think about what we're doing and that's not just water .
Speaker 2That's everything so think about . Do we really want to go and do that ?
Speaker 1do we really have to drive down the road ? Do we really have to ?
Speaker 2buy those new clothes whatever it is . We don't need to do it be a bit more mindful just be a bit more mindful and repair stuff rather than just being it , because you know throwaway society is and water's the same . We're throwing away , we're wasting it wicked well , thank you very much , steve .
Speaker 1That's been , uh , extremely enlightening . Um , I've learned a lot from that . Um , just finally , if people want to find out more about shower cap and how they can either be involved or just to learn about it , what's the best way to do that ?
Speaker 2We're on social . We're on LinkedIn . It's our main platform . We're on Insta as well , but yeah , have a look , check us out . It's showercap with a K , not a C . I'm dyslexic .
Speaker 1That's a good way of doing it and what I'll do is I will link your , I'll link the LinkedIn page and I'll link the website in the show notes for this . And yeah , if anybody , if that's been interesting , please let us know . And if you've got any questions for Steve , then get in touch with shower cap and the team will help you out again . Thank you very much , Steve . Thanks for coming in . That's been wicked . Yeah .
Speaker 2I've been good , thank you .