Building water quality deterioration during water supply restoration after interruption
Influences of premise plumbing configuration
Mingchen Yao (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Yue Zhang (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Zihan Dai (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Anran Ren (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Jiaxing Fang (Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Twente)
Xiaoming Li (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Walter van der Meer (University of Twente, Oasen)
Gertjan Medema (TU Delft - Sanitary Engineering, KWR Water Research Institute, Michigan State University)
Joan B. Rose (Michigan State University)
Gang Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
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Abstract
Premise plumbing plays an essential role in determining the final quality of drinking water consumed by customers. However, little is known about the influences of plumbing configuration on water quality changes. This study selected parallel premise plumbing in the same building with different configurations, i.e., laboratory and toilet plumbing. Water quality deteriorations induced by premise plumbing under regular and interrupted water supply were investigated. The results showed that most of the water quality parameters did not vary under regular supply, except Zn, which was significantly increased by laboratory plumbing (78.2 to 260.7 µg/l). For the bacterial community, the Chao1 index was significantly increased by both plumbing types to a similar level (52 to 104). Laboratory plumbing significantly changed the bacterial community, but toilet plumbing did not. Remarkably, water supply interruption/restoration led to serious water quality deterioration in both plumbing types but resulted in different changes. Physiochemically, discoloration was observed only in laboratory plumbing, along with sharp increases in Mn and Zn. Microbiologically, the increase in ATP was sharper in toilet plumbing than in laboratory plumbing. Some opportunistic pathogen-containing genera, e.g., Legionella spp. and Pseudomonas spp., were present in both plumbing types but only in disturbed samples. This study highlighted the esthetic, chemical, and microbiological risks associated with premise plumbing, for which system configuration plays an important role. Attention should be given to optimizing premise plumbing design for managing building water quality.
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