Building Industry News

Sustainable drainage project for Banbury school

18/02/2010 15:41:05

Sustainable drainage technologies have been employed in renovations at an Oxfordshire school in order to reduce flood risk and keep groundwater levels up.

Improperly drained, large concreted developments can have a negative environmental effect on the local water table and increase flood risks from run-off.

However, the project architects behind the Banbury project believe that the installation of two monocast drainage systems, composed of the recycled material Vienite, will prevent any such hazards.

David Johnson of architects Mouchel explained: "Replacing the point gullies in the car park with a channel system gave us the performance we needed. Linking these to a series of four soakaways at the perimeter of the car park completed the SUDS [sustainable urban drainage] network."

The drainage systems were produced by Bedfordshire firm ACO Technologies.

Late last year, a government-sponsored commission warned that run-off from domestic developments were stretching the UK's sewerage system to capacity.

The commission’s report urged highways departments in particular to consider ways of reducing run-off, which was a major cause of the devastating floods of 2007.

Posted by Rachel King

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