This article is from page 20 of the 2013-08-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 20 JPG
AN EAST Clare company is planning to treble its staffing numbers as it begins exporting its worldwidepatented rainwater recovery product to the United Kingdom.
Founder and director of Rainsavers Denis Sheehy said that the rain water recovery and optimisation company is in the early stages of drawing up plans to further export the unique product across Europe, North America and possibly worldwide.
The company based in Tuamgraney was set up two years ago by Mr Sheehy along with his brother-in-law Shane Kelly from Whitegate, after the former mechanical electronic engineer and newly qualified architect invented the product.
Mr Sheehy described his product: “It is essentially saving rain water from your roof and putting it back into your building as drinking water.
“It is gone from the old technology. There are quite a lot of companies out there doing rain water harvesting which is quite archaic technology, where the water is only really used for the toilets,” he said.
“We decided if you are going to look at rainwater at all you have to be able to optimise it. You have to be able to use it in the entirety of the house.
“We developed units that will click very easy on to your down pipes, pump the water away, filter the entire system and put it back into your house as drinking water standard. That way you can use it for your showers, sinks, hand basins, toilets, washing machines and for cooking,” he said.
“It is a hybrid system by way that when you have rain water the whole house is on rainwater and when your rainwater runs out it will automatically switch back on to the main system.”
Enterprise Ireland also believes in this new company as it is assisting in the plans to export the product.
“As part of the next five-year strategy, we are looking at the UK market this year and next year and to integrate ourselves into the UK market. Then we are looking at the European market in year three, and the US market then in year five,” said Mr Sheehy.
During the next two years the company intends to grow its staffing number from the current six members to “15 to 20 staff”.
With the onset of water charges, Rainsavers is already seeing an increase in domestic demand for its product, although the majority of its clients are still commercial.
To date a system has been fit for a chain of gyms in Limerick and Scarrif Community College.
The East Clare secondary school decreased its water usage from 12,000 litres a week to 3,000 litres a week.
The company is also in talks with a prominent national hairdresser business who want to use the rainwater for colouring, as colour as been found to react negatively with the chemicals in water.
Rainsavers system does not have any chlorine or chemicals and lime would not be a problem either according to the systems inventor.
“One of the main ethos with it was we had to have a system that was easy to fit on to any house, and the water had to be 100 per cent usable and we had to create as little interference with the existing house as possible. In theory if you sold your house you could take the system with you,” said Mr Sheehy.
The unit is approximately the size of an alarm or bell box, water is collected in a little tank that when it fills up the water is pumped away to another storage tank which can be build outside or in the attic of smaller houses, he explained.