Trim school saves for a rainy day

St Mary's Primary School in Trim will be saving on a rainy day from now on after installing three rainwater harvesting tanks. The three underground tanks were installed over the Easter holidays and take rainwater from the school's two roofs and store it in the new 30,000 litre reservoir. Parents were recently informed about the school's latest 'green' innovation. "All water usage, except drinking water, will now be rainwater as long as we have water in those tanks," the school's newsletter informed parents. Any shortfall in rainwater will be made up of the town's supply. "As a Green School, we are delighted to be able to use a natural source of water when we have 69 toilet cisterns in our school and 560 pairs of little and big hands are washed in a school day. This will amount to a sizeable saving." The school estimates that, in roughly seven years, it will have saved enough through using the rainwater to have paid for the €20,000 cost of the installation. Principal at the school, Cóilín " Cóigligh, said that St Mary's had previously narrowly missed out on a grant for the facilitation due to an expiring deadline, but that when he was in Australia as part of an exchange programme last year, the school at which he was based had the rainwater tanks working normally. "We funded it from existing funds in our account," he said. "The company who installed it, Galway-firm Rain Catchers, estimate that the saving will be €3,651 per annum, so that was passed through the Green Flag committee and the school's board of management," he said. With interest rates possibly increasing, the school has erred on the cautious side in predicting the payback time. The underground system at the school includes a UV treatment system, pumps, filters, water quality controls and air valve mains back-up to meet with regulations and commissioning of the system, all of which should amount to an annual saving of up to 85 per cent of mains water usage. The school also intends to fit a local area network IT facility so that it can monitor what percentage of rain water and town water the school is using day-by-day. Furthermore, St Mary's is currently in the middle of carrying out an environmental survey for installing a wind turbine. "We hope to have a planning application submitted in the next few weeks. All going well we will have a 'hurricane-proof' wind turbine installed before the end of the year. "This, we hope, will pay for itself in about 10 years, so it is a most worthwhile 'green' investment," said Mr " Cóigligh. "One of the issues, however, around payback time is that a school is designated 'commercial' rather than 'domestic'. This means that the ESB will not buy excess from us. If we can solve that problem, it will take less time for the wind turbine to pay for itself," said the school principal.