Surface Water Drainage Maintenance

Surface water drainage is taken for granted. We expect all those grates and gulleys to cope with anything, right? Even when we don’t bother to make sure they’re capable of taking the strain.

And it’s not hard to see how drains become clogged — general silt and debris such as leaf mulch will quickly block surface water gullies and aco drainage.

If surface water drainage isn’t taking rainwater effectively, it can cause flooding, ponding and, in icy weather, major slip hazards, not to mention deterioration in surfaces like tarmac.

Recent years have seen increased incidents of flooding in the UK, thanks to ever more erratic weather fronts and the increased use of impermeable surfaces in the urban environment. Our surface water drains have been overwhelmed by the volume of water, time and again.

To have a fighting chance of avoiding such scenes, surface water drains, gulleys and aco channels need to be checked and cleaned out regularly. Yet, the majority of organisations still leave it all to chance.

One Lanes’ client who sees the real value in keeping on top of the situation is The Trafford Centre in Manchester.

It’s the second largest shopping centre in the United Kingdom by overall size (including leisure and dining space) and the third largest by retail size. The statistics are staggering: ten percent of the UK population live within a 45-minute drive of the Trafford Centre, which attracts more than 30 million visitors annually. It also has Europe’s largest food court in The Orient and the UK’s busiest cinema, attracting over 28,500 visitors each week. There are over 10,000 car parking spaces.

With this volume of customers and visitors, The Trafford Centre management prefers to plan ahead. A drainage incident could be both damaging to individual businesses and potentially disastrous for the Centre’s polished reputation.

But Lanes has it covered, with a rolling schedule of maintenance visits spread over the year, including cleansing and desilting road gullies and aco channels annually, and descaling all 225mm diameter drains of mineral build up every six months.

Of course, with little downtime — the Trafford Centre retailers are open to the public until 10pm, six nights a week, with restaurants and bars even later — Lanes operates out of hours to minimise inconvenience to the public and to give the teams maximum access to get the job done.

For the Trafford Centre, keeping the surface water drainage system clean and flowing freely across the site makes absolute sense. And Lanes is happy to help it do just that.

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