DRAINAGE SYSTEMS
Priorities for a safe and secure drainage system
Drainage systems are an essential part of every habitation. When we look closely at essential health services, failing to maintain complex drainage systems can result in major knock-on effects, both to health and logistics. Here Paul Morrow, Country manager in the UK & Ireland for the Emerson Professional Tools division, highlights a range of reliable methods to help healthcare estates teams to map, inspect, and maintain, a safe a secure drainage system, and avoid unnecessary incidents.
Everyone knows that having issues with your drainage system can be a real pain, and an expensive one too. Odours, blocked toilets, or worse – drain cleaners have seen it all, and often it wasn’t a pretty sight. Of course drainage issues don’t happen only in residential housing. If such problems arise in office buildings, sports facilities, or shopping centres, the
response will be to close the toilets, and to instruct people to use other premises, etc. until help is underway, but what happens when, say, a large acute hospital experiences drainage problems? The challenges in a hospital are so different to those experienced in, say, a local gym. Hospitals can be particularly complex buildings in terms of architecture and
installation. They are in use around the clock by healthcare professionals, hospital staff, patients, and their visitors, providing a wide range of different care and treatment – routine, urgent, and life- critical. Other healthcare premises, such as doctors’ practices and care homes etc, could face equally specific drainage- related challenges, with both residents in, and visitors to, such facilities in many cases vulnerable to nasty viruses and microbes. The maintenance challenges for drainage systems in healthcare premises are complex, and sewage systems backing up behind a blockage can impose serious problems. Evidently the health and safety measures after such an unfortunate event are also much more stringent for these premises. In the worst instances, it can mean having to move patients to other wards while the problem area is being cleaned and sanitised. It thus remains of the utmost importance that drainage systems are treated correctly, and maintained regularly. Every stakeholder, and all users of the drainage system, should be on board to keep the system in a good working state.
RIDGID’s FlexShaft drain cleaning machines are ‘durable, portable, multi-purpose machines’. They utilise a cordless drill, and do not require a separate water connection.
Key steps to avoid blockages What are the key steps for avoiding blockages? Firstly, know your drainage system. Many hospital sites have developed and expanded considerably over their many years in operation – due both to the need for increased capacity requirements, and for additional facilities to meet changing clinical and surgical demands. The mapping of the hospital’s drainage systems may well not have kept up to date with this process, and the plans may be inaccurate or incomplete. This can make identification of the root cause of a blockage much more difficult, and the duration of emergency calls, in particular, can become protracted, particularly bearing in mind that in some hospital wards, sewer workers must comply with very specific safety measures.
July 2021 Health Estate Journal 73
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
