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Shadow Water: Fast leakage and demand reduction. Guaranteed results.

The new low risk, low cost and low effort way to help you hit your leakage, revenue and business demand reduction targets. Get a bonus and a pat on the back rather than a fine and bad press. Find out how...

Get in touch to find out how much this could help you

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Hitting your targets is stressful enough without Shadow Water holding you back!

Non-household properties use 30% of the UK’s water. A significant number - 1 in 50 - have some form of Shadow Water.

These hidden properties are inflating your leakage and demand - jeopardising your targets. Some are knowingly taking your water without paying for it.

You can’t do much about a cold spell - but you can do something about these.

What is Shadow Water?

Shadow Water is any water used or wasted, without the water company or customer’s knowledge. The water exists in an “undetected shadow state”, hidden from all.

It hampers the running of an efficient water system, where your customers pay for what they use, your leakage is accurately reported and waste is quickly eradicated.

It comes in two forms: Shadow Leakage and Shadow Demand.

Shadow Leakage: Reduce your reported leakage and boost your revenue

Shadow Leakage is where the water is consumed, but not billed. Some of your commercial properties have unbilled supplies, bypassed meters, faulty meters, deliberate theft even. They push your leakage up, and bring your revenue down.

Finding these properties reduces your reported leakage, boosts your revenue and improves DMA operability. This service pays for itself and costs a fraction of other leakage projects.

Shadow Demand: Quickly improve your headroom by targeting non-households who are wasting your water

Shadow Demand is where the water is billed, but not consumed. It’s wasted - and in a big way. One case of Shadow Demand saves as much water as 25 water audits, which is why this is a fast and low-cost way to save water.

Focus this on your most water stressed areas to improve headroom and reduce the risk of hosepipe bans.

One service, three distinct outputs – you choose what you need to hit your targets

You can find:

  1. Shadow Leakage - metered use is too LOW
  2. Shadow Demand - metered use is too HIGH
  3. BOTH

We can also focus on specific areas or sectors. Keen to help your primary schools save water? Struggling with a particular zone? Want to start small and build up?

Quick and easy to get going

To get going is so quick and easy.

We just need a simple contract and some metered consumption data. Perhaps an ID badge too if you want us to do some field work.

You don’t need to invest a lot of your time in getting this off the floor.

See how it works

Typical things we find

An unmetered supply serving student accommodation
Large leak under school classroom
Unbilled water meter found at nursing home
Example of a water fire tank with a large leak
An unbilled water bypass meter

Shadow Leakage

An unmetered feed to a student accommodation block. This was unbilled for over 10 years! There were two billed meters for the retail units, but the accommodation itself had never been billed.

Student accommodation is renowned for having problems with ‘leaky loos’. With no meter here, how would you know if there’s a leakage or wastage issue?

Shadow Demand

A school with a 51,000 litre per day leak under this classroom floor. The leak had run for over six years! No wonder the caretaker said they always had problems with slugs at this end of the school.

The savings at this school are the same as 50 standard water audits. But because it’s only one site – it’s less time-consuming, less work and less cost to get the savings.

Shadow Leakage

A nursing home with an unbilled meter. This home is split into two sections. The section on the right was billed. The section on the left, however, was unbilled. This section contains two thirds of the rooms, plus the kitchens and communal areas, and had this unbilled meter.

These are difficult to find because the billed meter masks the issue in the billing system.

Shadow Demand

A fire tank with a massive leak. Over 100,000 litres per day was leaking into the bottom of the structure and down the drain.

Enough water was being wasted here to serve 200 households – in an area designated as severely water stressed by the Environment Agency.

Shadow Leakage

A fruit farm with an unbilled meter. This farm had a combination meter. The main meter was billed, but the bypass meter was not.

This supply has high seasonal use, with fruit pickers occupying 91 caravans throughout the Summer. With an extra 450 people on site, there will be a seasonal increase in night use that you'll want to capture – otherwise it will go on your leakage.

Testimonials

Highlow Water’s analysis has helped us to uncover significant volumes of unaccounted-for water and high use at non-household properties. We’ve been able to focus the analysis into areas where it helps us the most.

The analysis finds issues at properties that would otherwise fly under the radar and are not obvious from simple analysis of the data. Highlow’s approach turns these hidden issues into low-hanging fruit, which helps us against our business targets.

David Jacobs

Anglian Water

SEW used High Low Water to help us identify which schools were using more water than they should be so that they could be targeted through our water efficiency work.

Ben and the High Low team helped us identify some Super High using schools. Ben was also really helpful in visiting the schools and helped these schools find leaks and fix them quickly, helping them save money and water! Thank you for the work you did-it helped us be specific in where we target!

Michelle Marvel

South East Water

I am pleased to provide this reference regarding our ongoing partnership with Highlow on the current water efficiency trial.

From the outset, Highlow has demonstrated exceptional professionalism and a proactive, collaborative approach. Their team has worked closely with ours to design and deliver each phase of the project, ensuring clear communication, careful planning, and smooth coordination across all stakeholders.

Although the trial is still in progress, the process so far has been well managed and has given us confidence in both the methodology and Highlow’s expertise. They have been responsive to any operational challenges and consistently maintain high standards of safety, accuracy, and customer engagement.

Based on our experience to date, we have every confidence in Highlow’s ability to see the project through successfully and would recommend them to other water companies considering a similar initiative.

Ayan Elmi

Affinity Water

Clients

Guaranteed results

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Extra benefits to help hit your targets

Get in touch now to see how much you could benefit

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