Estate Living Magazine Estate Living Issue 29 May | Page 41

when someone at The Westin said, “Uhm, why are we just re-mineralised, and then it goes into a reticulation system to be
pumping all that water in the basement away? Can’t we use it sent off to the three participating hotels.
for something?” The seed was planted, but it was only in 2017
when things started looking really dire that what had been quite
a nice idea became – in rapid succession – a flipping amazing
plan, a concrete proposal, and ultimately a physical reality.
The first thing they did was to change the outdoor pool to a
salt-water chlorination system, and fill it with water from the
basement, and then the desalination project followed.
After parking my car at “Bed Rock” I took the lift up to the foyer
and met up with Chief Engineer Andrew Gartshore, who took
me back down to the parking lot, and then into the Belly of the
Beast. It hadn’t come online yet, so it was reasonably quiet –
This process produces 400 000 litres of fresh water per day,
enough for all the needs of the three hotels, and 600 000 litres
of salty water that – ta-daaa – is almost exactly the salinity of
sea water, and is pumped back into the ocean. It’s such a win-
win situation that is seems obvious in retrospect. But it wasn’t
cheap, and it took a complete reassessment of the value of
water to make it feasible.
And also – hmm, there’s the issue of the electricity it uses.
In 2007 and 2008, we had load shedding, and everyone
was frantically turning off lights when they left a room for five
just a few pumps – but most of the equipment was in place. minutes. We all learned to find our way round our houses in the
The brackish water seeps in and flows at quite a pace in a hours per 1 000 litres, that probably would not have gone down
sort of underground river that made me think of the Phantom well back then.
of the Opera, except it was below a grating and there wasn’t
enough room for a boat, a singer and a psychopath. The pumps
that used to pump the water into the sea, will now pump it
into a series of filters (similar to, but much bigger than the
under-counter one in your kitchen) that does the first part of
dark, and we gave up ironing our clothes. So, at four kilowatt-
But it’s definitely a good idea now. So, once the obvious hotel –
The Westin – was in the pipeline, HPF did some drilling around
their other two properties, and found a very similar water source
near the Radisson Blu, so they’re busy installing an almost
the purification. Then it goes to the reverse osmosis plant. I’d identical plant there.
heard all about these, but I’d never actually seen one, so I was It’s all a balancing act – cost vs benefit.
quite excited to learn exactly how they work.
It is basically a pipe within a pipe. The inner pipe has holes
the water can go through and is covered by a semi-permeable
membrane. Water is pumped into the outer pipe, and then
pressurised so it is forced into the inner pipe, but the membrane
won’t allow the salts to go through it. So what comes out of the
inner pipe is fresh water. This then goes through an ultra-violet
steriliser to kill off any nasty lurgies that may have crept in. It is
“In 2007 we were putting in LED lighting and heat pumps,”
says HPF CEO Keith Randall, “and now we’re concentrating
on water.” It’s a pretty pricey option, he acknowledges, but
there’s no way a 482-room five-star hotel can survive financially
if its water supply is cut off. That’s just not an option. And it will
almost certainly pay for itself as the cost of water goes up. And
it will continue to go up,” he adds.
Jennifer Stern
www.estate-living.com | 41