Request for Proposals: Residential End Uses of Water

This project is funded by the Water Research Foundation (WRF) as part of WRF’s Research Priority Program. This project is co-sponsored by the Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE).

The overall project objective is to comprehensively identify and evaluate the end uses of water in single-family and multi-family households on a per dwelling unit and per capita basis. A minimum of two multi-family household sub-categories (such as condos, townhomes, or apartments) should be included in the study and outlined clearly in the proposal. Proposers should also consider a variety of other types of housing diversity, such as the size of multifamily development, urban vs. rural, renter vs. owned, low-income vs. high-income, full-time vs. vacation home, and geographic diversity. In addition, the proposer is required to document customer/household characteristics to support, and compare against, the end use evaluation.

Project Objectives

• Evaluate changes in disaggregated water uses in single-family households and a baseline for multi-family households by collecting current data from sites that statistically represent their service areas and analyzing the data to identify variations in water used by each fixture or appliance. Outdoor analysis should be limited (e.g., focus on analyzing outdoor usage with lot size and pervious areas).
• Evaluate differences and similarities between single-family and multi-family households (e.g., limited sub-categories, such as condos, townhomes, and apartments).
• Compare results from this study with past end-use studies, such as WRF projects DeOreo et al. 2016 and Mayer et al. 1999, to develop water use trends over time.
• At a high level, discuss how housing class composition has changed over the last 15 years in the study area.

Budget

• Applicants may request up to $600,000 in WRF funds for this project.
• Project Duration: The anticipated period of performance for this project is 36 months from the contract start date.

Expected Deliverables

• The expected deliverables from this project include:
  • Research report
  • Key findings report with infographics designed for lay audience
  • End Use Data
  • Minimum of one Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE) Symposium presentation during project
  • Webcast
• Other deliverables from this project may include:
  • Conference presentation
  • Workshop
  • Peer-reviewed journal article(s)
  • Fact sheets, case studies, videos, etc.

Eligibility Criteria

• Proposals will be accepted from both U.S.-based and non-U.S.-based entities, including educational institutions, research organizations, governmental agencies, and consultants or other for-profit entities.
• Researchers who are late on any ongoing WRF-sponsored studies without approved no-cost extensions are not eligible to be named participants in any proposals.
• WRF encourages participation from water utilities and other organizations in WRF research. Participation can occur in a variety of ways, including direct participation, in-kind contributions, or in-kind services.

For more information, visit WRF.