ACO Building Drainage has designed and manufactured an engineered drainage solution as part of the redevelopment of the iconic BBC Television Centre.
The drainage system sits at the base of Helios, a three-metre high gilded bronze statue designed by renowned artist TB Huxley-Jones as the centre piece of the old BBC Television Centre courtyard. ACO Building Drainage was asked to design a complex radial channel solution which would fit into the new paving that had been specified and cut for the area surrounding the statue’s base.
Normally a deep, narrow channel would be specified to cope with the high volume of water but for this project, the drainage had to be designed so the channel was wider and had a shallower than normal depth. Drainage also had to be of a sufficiently high load class to deal with ongoing cleaning and maintenance requirements.
ACO Building Drainage’s technical design team designed an engineered drainage system which comprised two concentric circles of 304 grade AS1050 discrete channel. Special laser cut gratings were also produced from 304 stainless steel and the design team provided ‘northing’s and ‘eastings’ on the installation drawings to enable the contractors to determine the exact location of the channel outlets.