ACO new user-friendly wetroom drainage system

ACO Building Drainage demonstrated its innovative new wetroom drainage system at a mock-installation day in Wigan at Procare Shower and Bathroom Centre.

The unique design and layout of the system makes creating an accessible wetroom easy, fast and affordable.

City of Salford provides over 350 sustainable bathroom adaptations per year for less mobile people looking for ways to make their homes more accommodating to their needs.

It is often required to convert their existing bathrooms into wetrooms, as wetrooms are much more accessible for less-abled people and the elderly.

However, City of Salford found that installing a wetroom in an existing building often proved problematic.

Robert Turnbull (Senior Surveyor) and Anthony Lawton (Surveyor) from City of Salford, Sustainable Regeneration, Specialist Housing Service explained, "We noticed that many of the older buildings in the area suffered from subsidence and floor variations, making it complex to achieve a level free-draining floor for a wetroom".

"Whether we used drainage channels or central gullies, we would have to make considerable adjustments to the building, which took time and a lot of planning".

"Central gullies were also found to be problematic for people with mobility issues, creating steep falls and potentially an uneven surface.

Looking for a solution to this problem, City of Salford approached ACO Building Drainage to come up with a better system.

ACO used its expertise to design a new drainage system that addressed the issues being faced by City of Salford, and worked together with construction company Hughes Bros to ensure the system met the needs of installers.

Chris Hurst, Director of the Division for Specialist Adaptations at Hughes Bros, commented, "ACO were extremely knowledgeable but also willing to listen to what we had to say".

"We worked alongside them to ensure the system would be fast and easy to install, as well as effective and durable once fitted.

Following an extensive design and development process, the solution proposed was a new kind of drainage system called the Intercept Channel.

The system allows an 'L' shaped drainage channel to be fitted facing the corner of the room, rather than running against the wall like conventional channel designs.

This simple but crucial difference makes it possible to simply raise the level of the floor in the shower area slightly using weber.floor 4040 Combi Rapid compound, rather than having to adjust the level of a much larger area, or in many cases the entire floor.

To demonstrate the benefits of this new system, ACO and Hughes Bros organised a mock-installation day at Procare, a shower and bathroom centre and authorised ACO distributor in Wigan, approximately 20 minutes away from Salford, and invited various City Councils to see the new solution being fitted for themselves.

The Intercept Channel was installed in an artificial vinyl floor in the demonstration area in just a few hours, using a vinyl clamp mechanism unique to the system.

The result was a leak-free drainage system that drained freely, leaving the vinyl floor surface dry and safe.

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