Bradford on Avon suffered extensive flooding, and water levels rose up to 2m. In this warehouse, Newton Specialist Basement Contractor Guardian Preservation installed Newton Titan-Pro Chambers and NP 750 Pumps with Newton System 500 to form a full flood protection system.

Project Details

The fall of water that is held up by Bradford Weir has historically powered many of the mills and factories of the town, including Weirside Mill which was used for woollen cloth manufacture during the 18th century. In the 1980s the site was developed for housing.

The River Avon at Bradford on Avon has always been liable to burst its banks, as the river rises quickly with heavy rainfall and usually it spills fairly harmlessly over the floodplain above Bradford. However on Christmas Eve 2013, Bradford on Avon was brought to a standstill, with the town bridge flooding, and by late January the Avon burst its banks for the tenth time in six weeks.

During this time the workshop of Weirside Mill badly flooded and at its worse the water levels rose to 2 metres, leaving all equipment and workbenches floating. In March, Newton Specialist Basement Contractor Guardian Preservation were called in to design a flood remediation system to help deal with the large amounts of water ingress during flooding.

Methodology

Once the flooding started, it took approximately 4 hours for the water to reach 2 meters within the workshop. The workshop is 20m x 8m, the total volume of ingressing water was 320,000 litres, which over 4 hours, meant 80,000 litres an hour. To deal with these huge amounts of water, Guardian installed two Titan-Pro chambers with twin NP 750s alongside two Battery Backup Systems.

To manage ingressing water, Guardian installed Newton Basedrain drainage channel flush with the top of the slab and drilled holes into the top, together with two trapped gullies which connected to the sump chambers. In the unlikely event that water came over the top of the channel water could still be brushed/pushed back into the system.

Result

Despite the River Avon again bursting its banks on a number of occasions, the workshop has remained dry and it is fully protected by Newton products and Guardian’s design and installation guarantee.