Appliances

The Appliances menu allows the user to specify the water consumption parameters of different appliances in the following end-use categories:

shower
dishwasher
washing machine
toilets
indoor hand taps
pool

These parameters are used by the behavioural model to calculate water use volumes for a household, given the specific appliance types and occupancy of that household.

Note that the outdoor/variable end-use is not included in the Appliance Types menu and is specified in the Behavioural Water Use node Feature Editor.

The Urban Developer Settings provide default appliance types and parameters for each end-use category based on the research of Thyer et al. (2009) and publications cited therein. The default appliance types can be edited, renamed or deleted, and new appliance types can be created. However, the underlying water consumption models cannot be edited. Future work is to expose some of the parameters of these models (specifically, how usage frequency scales with the number of occupants) to the user.

Restrictions

The Appliance Types are available for Urban Scenarios only.

Dependencies

None

Outputs

The appliance types are used by the Sampled Appliances & Occupancy and the Behavioural Water Use node.

Properties

Shower

Property	Description	Units	Constraints
Name	The name of the appliance type	NA	NA
Volume Mean	Shower flow rate is modelled using a log-normal distribution. Volume Mean is the mean (unitless) of the normal distribution obtained by taking the natural logarithm of the log-normal distribution.	L/min*	>= 0
Volume SD	Shower flow rate is modelled using a log-normal distribution. Volume SD is the standard deviation (unitless) of the normal distribution obtained by taking the natural logarithm of the log-normal distribution.	L/min*	> 0
Duration Mean	Shower duration is modelled using a log-normal distribution. Duration Mean is the mean (unitless) of the normal distribution obtained by taking the natural logarithm of the log-normal distribution.	min*	>= 0
Duration SD	Shower duration is modelled using a log-normal distribution. Duration SD is the standard deviation (unitless) of the normal distribution obtained by taking the natural logarithm of the log-normal distribution.	min*	> 0
Daily Prob	Average number of showers/person/day	none	>= 0

* Units are for the log-normal distribution.

Dishwasher

Property	Description	Units	Constraints
Name	The name of the appliance type	NA	NA
Volume	The volume of water used by the dishwasher during each minute of a 20 minute cycle. It is not currently possible to distribute the water use over a cycle greater than 20 minutes in length.	L	>= 0

Hand Tap

Property	Description	Units	Constraints
Name	The name of the appliance type	NA	NA
Volume	Average litres per usage event	L	>= 0

Toilet

Property	Description	Units	Constraints
Name	The name of the appliance type	NA	NA
Full Volume	The average volume of a full flush for a single or dual-flush toilet	L	>= 0
Full Daily Prob	Average number of full toilet flushes/person/day for single or dual-flush toilets	none	>= 0
Half Volume	The average volume of a half toilet flush for a single or dual-flush toilet	L	>= 0
Half Daily Prob	Average number of half toilet flushes/person/day for dual-flush toilets	none	>= 0

Washing Machine

Property	Description	Units	Constraints
Name	The name of the appliance type	NA	NA
Vol Mean	Mean volume of a washing machine event	L	>= 0
Vol SD	Standard deviation of a washing machine event	L	> 0
Distribution	The distribution used to model the washing machine water usage per event. Options are: Normal Log-normal If a log-normal distribution is selected, then Vol Mean and Vol SD are the unitless mean and standard deviation, respectively, of the normal distribution obtained by taking the natural logarithm of the log-normal distribution.	NA	NA

Pool

Property	Description	Units	Constraints
Name	The name of the appliance type	L	>= 0
Surface Area	The pool surface area	m²	>= 0
Initial Depth	The depth of water in the pool at the start of the simulation	m	>= 0
Maximum Depth	The maximum depth of the pool	m	>= 0

Default Appliance Types

The table below lists the default appliance types for each end-use category. Water efficiency star ratings are based on WELS scheme (AS/NZS6400:2005, Water Efficient Products - Rating and Labelling)

End-use Category	Default Appliance Types
Shower	0, 1, 2 or 3-star shower head
Dishwasher	Dishwasher, no dishwasher
Washing Machine	Top loader, front loader
Hand Tap	Standard, no tap
Toilet	Dual flush 4.5/3 litre (4-Star) Dual flush 6/3 litre (3-Star) Dual flush 9/4.5 litre (1-Star) Dual flush 11/6 litre (0-Star) Single flush 10 litre (0-Star)
Pool	Pool, no pool

User Interface

Appliance Types are configured via the 2. Urban Settings menu.

Urban Developer provides default appliance types for each end-use category. The default appliance types can be edited, renamed or deleted, and new appliance types can be created.

Technical Details

The water consumption models for each of the end-use categories are detailed in Thyer et al. (2009) and references cited therein.

The application of these models to simulate the temporal variability in water use events is described in the behavioural model.

References

Roberts, P. (2005). 2004 Residential End Use Measurement Study, Final Report: Yarra Valley Water, Victoria.

Thyer, M.A., Duncan, H., Coombes, P., Kuczera, G. and Micevski, T. (2009) A Probabilistic Behavioural Approach for the Dynamic Modelling of Indoor Household Water Use. 32nd Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium, 30 November – 3 December 2009, Newcastle, Australia.