What maintenance is required on a surface water attenuation, infiltration or SuDS system?
Thank you for your question. The level of maintenance required after installing a surface water attenuation, infiltration or SuDS system is a very hot topic especially when the local municipal authority will be taking the area in charge and will have to look after maintenance in the future. Naturally as budgets at local level are stretched the last thing local authorities want to do is commit funds to ongoing maintenance.
The good news is that BMS have pioneered two different ways to make an attenuation, infiltration or SuDS system essentially maintenance free.
How do we make BMS Drainmax Tunnels Maintenance Free?
With our Drainmax Tunnel attenuation/infiltration system we recommend the installation of an isolator row. The row is completely surrounded by a permeable geotextile with a MacTex liner at the base. The Drainmax comes with 52 slotted holes per tunnel which allow the water to infiltrate out into the rest of the tunnels in an installation. However, all solids are contained within the isolator row, which means maintenance is confined to this row. The MacTex liner allows jet washing of the isolator row and means all solids can be washed through to the outlet manhole if required. However, if an isolator row is combined with a BMS Petrol/Oil Interceptor up stream and a BMS Stormbreaker Defender vortex silt/oil/debris downstream of the isolator row then maintenance is virtually eliminated bar emptying the interceptor and Defender when full.
You can see examples of systems on the next page, furthermore you can watch a video on the Drainmax below
How do we make BMS Stormbreaker System Maintenance Free?
Our Stormbreaker Attenuation/Infiltration system is a class leading Irish designed and manufactured Agrément certified system that is exceptionally strong and can take huge loads and is also very easy to transport/install. As it is a crate like system, we have devised a different way to prevent solids getting into the system.
We start off by placing a liner on the ground and then placing a perforated pipe directly on the base. The pipe is wrapped in a permeable geoxtextile, which is then covered in 200 mm of clean stone. The stone base forms part of the storage volume of the attenuation system and the Stormbreaker is then assembled directly on top of it. All solids are maintained within the distribution pipe and the water percolates upwards into the Stormbreaker system. Any solids in the pipe are washed through to the outlet manhole, it can also be jetted if required. Again all maintenance is confined to the inlet/outlet manholes and if the perforated distribution pipe is combined with a BMS Petrol/Oil Interceptor up front and a BMS Stormbreaker Defender vortex silt/oil/debris downstream of the isolator row then maintenance is virtually eliminated bar emptying the interceptor and Defender when full. An oil level alarm can even be placed in the interceptor which will alert when emptying is required.
You can watch a video showing a demonstration installation of BMS Stormbreaker at this link including the installation of the perforated pipe; https://youtu.be/4Y-4XbA7kVg
One Stop Shop for Surface Water Management and Design
BMS uniquely offer a ‘one stop shop’ from design to installation for our surface water management products.
BMS can design your full surface water management or SuDS system from first principles. We have invested in specialist software, which produces comprehensive design data. The design will include a full proposal, drawings and design calculations. This service is completely free to our customers.
BMS can also offer advice on sizing/selecting the correct attenuation/infiltration system, petrol/oil interceptor (separator), vortex silt/oil/debris defender, outlet flow controls & storage tanks.
Figure 1: Sample BMS Drainmax Installation
Figure 3: Sample BMS Stormbreaker Installation
Figure 2: Drainmax Isolator Row during installation
Figure 4: Stormbreaker perforated pipe wrapped in a geotextile