The Energy Policy Act of 1992 mandated that bathroom plumbing fixtures manufactured in the United States after January 1, 1994 meet standards for maximum water consumption. Manufacturers have developed low-consumption valves to meet these standards. The performance of low-consumption fixtures has become an important issue for facilities managers because the water saving by retrofitting low-consumption fixtures is significant. The fixtures in the Langford Architecture Building A, Texas A&M University were used to conduct this study. An acoustic information retrieval system was utilized to collect the sound signals of each fixture and a speech recognition system was utilized to identify which fixture was in use. The data from this study were analyzed to determine whether location of fixture and type of fixture—manual or automatic—caused a significant difference in frequency of use.

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 mandated that bathroom plumbing fixtures manufactured in the United States after January 1, 1994 meet standards for maximum water consumption. Manufacturers have developed low-consumption valves to meet these standards. The performance of low-consumption fixtures has become an important issue for facilities managers because the water saving by retrofitting low-consumption fixtures is significant. The fixtures in the Langford Architecture Building A, Texas A&M University were used to conduct this study. An acoustic information retrieval system was utilized to collect the sound signals of each fixture and a speech recognition system was utilized to identify which fixture was in use. The data from this study were analyzed to determine whether location of fixture and type of fixture—manual or automatic—caused a significant difference in frequency of use.