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Is there a leak in your school budget?
Detecting faulty equipment and hidden leaks is the fastest and easiest way your school can save money on water and energy charges.
$1,500 saved on average, per school
The Schools Water Efficiency Program (SWEP) is a free water use monitoring and leak alert program for Victorian primary and secondary schools.
Data loggers are installed on school water meters to continuously monitor water use. When the data loggers detect high water use, an alert is sent to the school. This helps schools to quickly find and fix leaks and faulty equipment.
FREE program
Every primary and secondary school campus in Victoria is eligible for water use monitoring under SWEP.
The program is free, with no up-front costs.
Once registered, the SWEP team will install a data logger on your school's main water meter. The logger only takes about 10 minutes to install. It will then start recording data for you to see in your dedicated SWEP Web portal.
If your school already has a digital water meter, SWEP can arrange for data to be sent to the SWEP Web portal.
Note: Costs may be incurred if your data logger is damaged and needs repair or to be replaced.
SWEP Web portal
You can view your school’s water use in near real-time through the user-friendly and interactive SWEP web portal.
Water use graphs, alerts and leak reports can easily be viewed online, customised and downloaded to help identify water use trends and opportunities to save water.
The web portal also provides advice on how to analyse water use trends and general tips on how to find a leak.
Thousands of schools already saving
So far, every school that has participated in SWEP has found a leak they might not have otherwise found!
Every drop counts - SWEP saves water!
If any water use over 100L is detected at midnight, you’ll receive an email alert the next day.
Collectively, schools have saved billions of litres of water, which would have cost millions in water charges.
Lowanna College in Newborough has saved 2,190kL of water and over $10,000 per quarter because SWEP helped them identify a broken pipe that was well hidden underground.
Earlier this year, another major leak was detected at Lowanna College. If left unchecked, the leak would have wasted more than 21,600 litres of drinking water every day, costing the school around $611 per week in avoidable water charges.
Lowanna College business manager Angela Skinner said the monitoring helped the school act quickly.
“Lowanna College has found the Schools Water Efficiency Program to be an extremely valuable initiative. The monitoring has helped us identify a number of leaks early, allowing us to respond quickly, minimise unnecessary water loss and reduce avoidable costs to the school. We encourage other schools to take advantage of the program.”
A fun, interactive learning tool
The SWEP portal and daily, real-time data can be used in classrooms to teach math units and integrates perfectly into sustainability and conservation studies.
Education resources
SWEP offers curriculum-aligned water efficiency education resources that get students involved in gathering and understanding their school’s water use data. The resources are free for everyone to use and include student worksheets , posters and activity plans for teachers and educators.
Find out more and register
Visit myswep.com.au to see how other schools have plugged leaks in their budgets, saved money, conserved water and used the free curriculum resources in their classrooms.