One Housing – Ventilation and intumescent grille replacement

Introduction

One Housing Association are a not-for-profit organization with a strong social focus. Their primary focus is on building new and affordable homes and housing management services across London and the South East. Another big part of their business is working with local authorities to help support homeless people or are living in temporary accommodation.

With this in mind, Hydro-X’s services were a key factor in developing the relationship with One Housing.

Challenge

During this project, Hydro-X Air were asked to complete the following tasks throughout 328 flats across 4 tower blocks:

  • To supply and install over 600 intumescent fire valves, as well as cleaning each resident’s bathroom and toilet extract
  • Clean all the Air Handling Units and Ventilation Ductwork, including the removal of old extract grilles

To add to the challenge, we had to conduct this work during the pandemic. Therefore, it was vital that we took all the necessary steps to ensure the safety of the residents, as well as our staff.

Solution

In order to ensure each resident had enough notice about our visit, One Housing approved a letter that we had written and our team delivered all 328 of these to each affected resident.  Our operations team and the account manager also worked hard to set up a dedicated appointment phone line. This would allow each of the residents to contact us to arrange a suitable appointment and to help minimize contact and reduce the chances of coming into contact with Covid-19. Each of these appointments was put into a live tracking document that the engineers could view to help plane their schedules.

The account manager also held regular virtual meetings with our site contact from One Housing to keep them up to date with the latest developments. We also provided daily service reports to ensure we maintained our high standard of works.

All of this allowed us to clean all the bathroom extracts to the following guidelines:

  • British Standards EN15780 (2013): Ventilation for Buildings – Ductwork – Cleanliness of Ventilation Systems
  • B&ESA TR19 (2nd ed) 2013: Guide to Good Practice: Internal Cleanliness of Ventilation Systems

On completion of the project we conducted a formal review of the post-inspection reports. During this review, we presented Once Housing with before and after images of each extract. We also detailed any issues we found so they were aware of these problems and could organise any required remedial actions.

Value added

All of these steps meant we could keep to the schedule that we had been given and clean all of the bathroom extracts to the following standards:

  • British Standards EN15780 (2013): Ventilation for Buildings – Ductwork – Cleanliness of Ventilation Systems
  • B&ESA TR19 (2nd ed) 2013: Guide to Good Practice: Internal Cleanliness of Ventilation Systems

Cleaning these extracts will help keep each of the residents and properties safe. Extracts free from dirt and debris allows more air to be extracted so there is a reduced build up of condensation in the bathrooms. Most importantly, it results in a property that is in line with the current regulations and safer for everyone.

 

To give you peace of mind about the safety of your buildings and to ensure they are compliant with the latest regulations and legislation, see Hydro-X Air‘s range of services to help you and your buildings