Eastman Village is an ambitious, multi-phased project built on the old Kodak factory site in Harrow, with Polypipe Building Services (PBS) currently providing drainage systems for 474 flats, across four towers – working with M&E Contractor, Millharbour on behalf of Barratt London.
THE PROJECT will deliver a complete new urban neighbourhood of over 2,000 homes together with workspace, retail and leisure facilities. The new homes include 40% affordable housing and a new healthcare facility.
The project is highly specified and carefully designed and incorporates many community amenities. The building layout is therefore quite complex, requiring a considered approach to how the M&E elements deliver all the facilities. The drainage system brief was therefore challenging in that the bathrooms were highly specified, but the build schedule was also very ambitious.
The Client, Millharbour Group, decided to use a prefabricated approach to the installation to hit project deadlines, with a highly customised system that would fit the bathroom design specification.
Following an initial analysis, Millharbour worked closely with PBS to create a bespoke solution. It was decided that Terrain FUZE would be the ideal system for the project. Terrain FUZE is made of HDPE, incorporates an extensive range of fittings and is very customisable. Terrain FUZE is also lightweight and highly resistant to impact and abrasion making it the perfect system for the high-level pipework in the basement. This meant that a single system could be used seamlessly for the whole building, while providing a tailored solution that could be installed rapidly.
The Polypipe Advantage Prefabrication Team created a design that combined buttwelds and expansion joints. The complex stack design could therefore be installed with just a single Electrofusion coupling on the ground floor to connect the stacks to the high-level pipework in the basement.
Robert Bruce, Technical Sales Manager for Polypipe Building Services in London explained: “Prefabrication and careful design really helped deliver the customisation and streamlined installation that the project demanded. After the high-level was installed with the single EF coupling at the bottom of each stack, the guys could just drop each floor section of stack down into the expansion joint below. And being so lightweight, Terrain FUZE is also very manpower-efficient compared to conventional systems. One person can carry an entire stack section compared to castiron which would require a team in itself.”
Andy Stylianou, Company Director at Millharbour, adds: “Polypipe Building Services have such a complete understanding of the different techniques available for jointing drainage stacks which, together with their prefabrication capability, meant that we were able to design a system that made quite a complex installation completely straightforward. Because the amount of on-site jointing work was minimised and the system was robust but lightweight, we could use the available manpower very efficiently. A smart solution, and we’re very proud that it was Highly Commended at this year’s Offsite Awards.”
