Portable device offers swift respite to interrupted water supplies for "whole streets"

Northumbrian Group subsidiary, Essex & Suffolk Water, has unveiled an in-house designed device that can be delivered to a site to maintain water supplies to homes in the event of a burst pipe or leak

The device, trademarked as a MoWBi, holds about 120 litres of water – enough to last a single household about six hours to flush the toilets and have a drink – while supplies are bing restored

MoWBis can be linked together, to support the water demand needs of many customers. This was tested, according to Essex & Suffolk, earlier this year at a nursery of more than 80 children in Chelmsford during repairs to a burst pipe

The water firm said the idea for the device emerged in 2020 from a collaboration with Furst Technologies. The two organisations designed and built an initial prototype and have now developed a large-scale version of the MoWBi – dubbed the ToWB – “to support the water needs of whole streets of houses, apartment blocks, and commercial properties such as care homes, vets, hairdressers and schools.”

Customer field services area manager for Essex & Suffolk Water, Stuart Sullivan, said the devices were “particularly useful for those customers who are on our Priority Services Register and are vulnerable or have specific medical requirements.”

He added: “We know how distressing it can be when water supplies go off and we’ll always do what we can to reroute water through the network to prevent this from happening. Sometimes though, it’s just not possible and it’s in cases like this that we can deploy MoWBi and ToWBi directly to the site.”