Everyone needs water: Plants, animals and of course people too. The average person in a private household consumes about 250 litres of fresh water per day. This is why a hygienic drinking water delivery is crucial for our health and our quality of life. The supply infrastructure is often in a poor condition and needs to be updated. Uponor offers safe and reliable solutions for ensuring a hygienically flawless supply in a building.
Drinking water systems and drinking water hygiene
Hygienically clean drinking water delivery is particularly important in residential building as well as for commercial and public buildings, such as hotels, nursing homes, hospitals and sports facilities. Builders, landlords and operators are responsible for drinking water hygiene and for ensuring that their drinking water deliverys meet legal requirements. These are regulated e.g. in Germany in the guideline VDI/DVGW 6023 "Hygiene in drinking water deliveries".
Requirements for planning, execution, operation and maintenance". The most important points are:
● Low water content
● Stagnation-free operation
● Regular exchange of water in the drinking water system
Single family homes
Uponor composite pipe in hygienic series installation.
Watch the video to see why Uponor recommends the so-called "loop installation". It is the safest type of installation (compared to T-installation or series installation) in order to meet hygienic requirements.
Office building
Uponor composite pipe with risers and ring installation.
In the video, see how the "loop-through ring installation" in an office building leads to a hygienically flawless installation.
Hotels, nursing homes and hospitals are under particular scrutiny by the health authorities. They carry out regular sampling of the installation systems in accordance with the German Drinking Water Ordinance in order to ensure hygienically safe drinking water use. The system operators are responsible for ensuring a hygienically safe drinking water delivery.
The expertise of a specialist is required when the use of water is interrupted frequently. The hygienic flushing system Uponor Smatrix Aqua PLUS, for example, ensures the regular and safe exchange of water according to the Drinking Water Ordinance.
The Drinking Water Ordinance requires landlords to regularly check the pipelines for Legionella. Legionella proliferate both in hot and cold water pipelines due to stagnation and a failure to maintain the temperature in the range from 25 to 50°C.
Drinking water systems are aided with flow-through U-wall angles, which are used at the connection point of the tap. This reliably prevents stagnation zones. Floor and individual supply lines for hot water with a water volume greater than 3 litres are to be equipped with circulation up to the extraction point according to DVGW [German Technical and Scientific Association for Gas and Water] worksheet W551. This, however, causes problems for cold-water installations. The hollow spaces of a front wall installation may heat up, for example. Even when the „circulation“ is looped through, this may lead to undesired drinking water heating of the fittings carrying cold water and the cold water in the installation. The ring installation on floor helps to prevent this happening.
