A water conservation order is now in effect across Dublin, south Tipperary and parts of Wicklow, Kildare, Meath and Wexford. It’s due to run until 26 August. It followed a stretch of exceptionally warm, dry weather that pushed national domestic water use to around 20% above typical levels. Daily use in the Greater Dublin Area reached a record 693 million litres, roughly 50 million litres above the year to date average.
Met Éireann has since issued a further Status Yellow high temperature warning, and other counties are being considered for similar restrictions if conditions don’t ease.
For most households, that shows up as a hosepipe ban. For a commercial building, it shows up somewhere else first: pressure. It’s a scenario Campion Pumps deals with on commercial sites across Ireland, and this stretch of weather is testing the network harder than most.
Why the network is under pressure this summer
Warm, dry weather pushes water use up everywhere at once: gardens, appliances, cooling systems, and more. Every extra litre drawn at peak times adds to demand on the same treatment plants and mains that handle normal usage the rest of the year. A single hot day rarely causes strain. Weeks of it, back to back, is what pushes demand to a sustained peak, and that’s the pattern this summer has followed.
Why multi-storey buildings feel it first
Static pressure drops as water climbs a building, so the upper floors of any multi-storey building already operate closest to the margin under normal conditions. When network pressure fluctuates during a demand spike, that margin disappears fastest where it was smallest to begin with.
Facilities teams in these buildings tend to notice a familiar pattern:
- Weak flow on the upper floors
- Pressure that varies noticeably through the day
- Cooling systems drawing water less efficiently
- Complaints concentrated on the top two or three floors
None of this points to a fault in the building itself. It’s what happens when supply pressure and building height meet during a demanding stretch of weather.
What does a correctly designed booster set solve?
A booster set reduces a building’s reliance on the network to deliver full pressure. As long as there’s sufficient flow and minimum pressure coming in, the booster set raises and maintains whatever pressure the building actually needs. That puts control over water pressure with the building itself, independent of what’s happening on the street main.
The detail that separates a good booster set from a barely adequate one is the variable speed drive, or VSD. A VSD-controlled booster set matches its output to real demand instead of running at a single fixed rate all day.
During a quiet period it draws less power and wears less. During a peak, such as a hot afternoon with every tap and cooling unit running, it responds without the building noticing. Over a full year, that difference shows up directly on the energy bill.
Getting the design right from the start
The best point to influence booster pump installation is at design stage, before the unit is ordered. M&E engineers and facilities managers who get involved early end up with a system sized to the building’s actual peak demand. That’s a detail a later-stage installation rarely gets the chance to fix.
This is also where a custom-built booster set has the edge over an off-the-shelf one. An off-the-shelf unit is sized to a generic spec. Campion designs and builds each booster set to match that demand, in-house and CE certified. Very few companies in Ireland do this themselves instead of reselling imported units.
Monitoring plays a role too. Campion Connect flags a developing pressure issue early. That gives a facilities team time to act during business hours, well before a call comes in at 2am on a weekend.
Maintenance is the final piece, and it’s usually the difference between a booster set that copes with a heatwave and one that fails during it.
What happens if a booster set or pump station fails during a heatwave?
Sustained high demand means booster pumps and pump stations run harder and for longer than usual. Extended run times increase mechanical wear.
That raises the likelihood of a fault developing during the heatwave itself, exactly when there’s no room in the network to absorb it.
Campion’s emergency response service
When something does go wrong, response time matters. Campion runs a 24/7 nationwide emergency response service from teams based in Dublin and Tipperary. That covers booster sets and pump stations across commercial and industrial sites.
An in-house testing facility and a dedicated workshop mean most makes and models can be assessed and repaired quickly. There’s no long wait on parts from a manufacturer.
Water tankers and temporary storage as a backup
This is where Campion’s tanker and hire fleet earns its place in the story. Standby water tankers can supply a building temporarily during a repair, a planned shutdown, or a period when normal delivery can’t be guaranteed. IBC tanks and other temporary storage buffer supply on site for as long as needed.
Much of this equipment was built for construction sites and planned works. The same setup applies directly to a heatwave-driven shortfall. It gives a building a fallback that doesn’t depend on the network recovering to any particular timeline.
Book a booster set survey with Campion Pumps’ design team before the next demand spike arrives.
