Location: Birmingham
Contractor: BAM and J & S
Project Completion: 12th August 2019
Geberit Mapress Stainless Steel for gas
Geberit HDPE
Duofix Frames
Three Snowhill is a landmark office building at the Gateway to the Birmingham Business District and the final element of the hugely successful Snowhill Estate. With its striking design, the contemporary building offers a premier and modern working environment.
Once complete, the glass-clad structure will provide 32,000 square metres of office space over 17 storeys, along with leisure, retail and parking areas. Due to the design, high specification and scale of the Snowhill development, contractors BAM and J & S sought industry leading sanitaryware solutions.
As part of Three Snowhill’s washroom specification, contractor BAM selected Geberit Duofix prewall installation frames and Twyford 3D wall-hung toilets.
A key factor in the specification of Geberit Duofix was its ease of installation. Installing the pre-wall frame system reduced the complexities often association with wall-hung ceramics, with the entire system designed with versatility, installation and ease of maintenance in mind. Crucially, this made it easier to install the frames within the development’s smaller washrooms.
The cisterns are concealed inside a drywall, eliminating the need for additional, carefully positioned studding. The result for Three Snowhill was a strong, reliable and leak free finish, thanks to its one-piece blow moulded cistern, angle bracket fixings and snap connectors.
Offering complete flexibility, the Twyford 3D wall-hung toilets take up no floor space, creating the illusion of a larger area, and reducing the prospect of dust and dirt build up compared to close coupled toilets.
Overall, the Twyford wall-hung ceramics blended seamlessly with the project’s premium theme, transforming the various sizes and shapes of the washrooms into stylish and spacious areas.
Geberit Mapress Copper was selected as the supply system for a variety of the project’s pipework applications, including heating, chilled water and potable water.
A key reason for the specification was due to its attributes of speed and simplicity compared to conventional pipework connections – a key requirement due to the sheer volume of pipework being installed. The whole process takes much less time to install compared to traditional counterparts and lowered labour costs in comparison to conventional connection technology.
Mapress also fulfilled the development’s stringent health and safety guidelines. With no requirement for hot works, the process is extremely clean and reduced risk of fire to the wider building compared to soldered alternatives.
Steve Murphy, Building Services Manager at Bam comments:
“Geberit’s products are stylish, versatile and easy to install. In particular, Geberit’s Duofix system provided the perfect solution as the frames were available in a wide range of heights, depths and functionalities which gave us greater design freedom. Plus, with just four fixing points they were easy and quick to install, which kept downtime to a minimum and helped keep our project timelines on track.“
“Geberit also offered up their testing room so we could test the Duofix frames with the specified Twyford 3D wall-hung toilets prior to installation.”
Discussing the Mapress specification, Jay Ward at J & S Industrial Ltd commented:
“Geberit provided a great service throughout, including a training provision which gave us the chance to get hands on with the Mapress pipework and understand all its advantages in greater detail. We were really impressed with its simple connection technology and the quick turnaround time of the installation.”
In terms of service, all contractors greatly appreciated the one point of contact for information regarding Mapress, Duofix frames and Twyford ceramic specifications.