Aquacell Stormwater Management System

Aquacell from Wavin Plastics is the Stormwater Management System of choice for Countryside Properties development.

Building regulations for new developments state that sustainable drainage systems should replicate as closely as possible the natural drainage from a site before development.

When Countryside Properties started to plan a new development of 57 two, three and four bedroom properties at Pendrill Park in Papworth Everard, near Cambridge it soon realised that due to the clay ground conditions soakaways would be ineffective and therefore a tailored stormwater storage system was needed.

The current development comprises of a mixture of formal traffic calmed carriageway and informal hard standing areas with a large soft landscape area.

This arrangement lent itself to a tank storage system situated under the landscaped area.

The design of the stormwater management system had to take into the account the 57 homes with planning permission, as well as future expansion due to the possibility of more houses being built in the future.

Several options were considered and discussed, including various modular systems and concrete culverts.

AquaCell, the modular stormwater management system from Wavin Plastics, fulfilled all the necessary requirements including easy of installation, storage capacity, short lead times and cost effectiveness.

Owen Elliott, Regional Engineer at Countryside Properties comments: "We looked at a number of options, keeping in mind that this development will get bigger and a solution with a large storage capacity was needed.

Concrete was going to be too expensive for a site of this size and delivery times were too long for our tight schedule.

"Wavin's experts successfully demonstrated that AquaCell is the best solution.

As it is much lighter than concrete it was not so difficult to install with the ground conditions being less than perfect.

Also, no heavy machinery was required and the installation was finished much quicker.

All in all, a fast and cost effective stormwater management installation." AquaCell is an efficient way of controlling stormwater, either by limiting the outflow and providing temporary storage, or where conditions are suitable, providing soakaways for the stormwater to infiltrate back into the surrounding ground.

At the Pendrill Park development 7,260 AquaCell crates were installed to build an attenuation tank with a storage capacity of 1,450 cubic metres.

"Being able to store stormwater temporarily and slowly release it back into the drainage system is the ideal way of dealing with rainwater run-off," comments Elliott.

"Attenuation is the perfect solution for this development and it is great to have the space to install a large tank like this." Wavin's technical experts calculated all the parameters and provided CAD drawings working very closely with the Consulting Engineers.

From the initial concepts to the final installation, construction of the AquaCell attenuation tank took only six months.

The AquaCell Stormwater Management System comprises individual infiltration modules assembled together to form an underground structure which can either be used for stormwater storage or as an NHBC approved alternative to domestic soakaways.

It is suitable for areas prone to flooding such as those that are remote from a public sewer or watercourse, and within fully sewered urban regions to limit the impact of run-off.

The modular principle allows total flexibility to ensure the assembly configuration can be tailored for any site, from major development projects to smaller limited area locations.

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