St John of God Hospital, Ballarat was established in 1915 and is currently the largest private hospital in regional Victoria.
Location:
101 Drummond St N, Ballarat, VIC, 3350
Water Use:
Significant water is required to maintain the highest infection control standards as well as showers, toilets and a commercial scale laundry.
Implementation:
The hospital installed four large 45,000L tanks to store sterilizer vacuum pump seal water and storm water from the boiler house roof, a 10,000L holding tank to capture the sterilizer water prior to pumping it into the large tanks, a system for filtration and UV disinfection of the recycled water prior to use and a pipe network to transfer the captured water and deliver it for reuse in the hospitals cooling towers, boilers and toilets.
Results:
The hospital has reduced its consumption from around 70 million litres (ML) per annum (pa) to around 60ML pa (a saving of 14%) as a result of improvement works so far (leaks, showers and toilets). The water capture and recycling project will save a further 5 to 7ML pa and the higher efficiency taps and toilets in the new wards will result in additional water savings. They also transferred their linen processing to Eureka Linen, which will reduce SJGHB’s consumption by around 20ML pa, saving the community around 15ML pa.