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FEATURES
Successful laboratories are the result of extensive planning, collaboration, and coordination between professionals, including plumbers.
deemed to satisfy. Deem-to-satisfy rules are merely
a recipe for how to comply with the performance.
• A ‘rational design’ is the domain of the design
engineer, wherein “people often do not read the
regulations clearly, because the design has to be
signed off by someone registered as an engineer,
architect or scientist – no other.” Brink explains
that this is being abused in South Africa – a
country that has all the right regulations in place,
but which are seldom enforced.
• An Agrément certificate, which registers designs
at the CSIR, “in which case the design is done
according to the Agrément certificate and not to
Part P”.
nuisance, pose a health threat, or be unsafe, and piping
must be correctly sized to convey the effluent safely to
the municipal sewage connection.
Sanitary drainage piping quality
“In my view, a blocked drain that overflows inside a
building or even in a public area is a ‘serious health
threat’ and such situations must be mitigated by
means of correct and innovative rational design by a
competent registered civil or mechanical engineer,”
says Brink.
The most important elements of all parts of the NBR
are health and safety, but also economic viability.
Unfortunately, the NBR does not address the water and
sanitation services of a laboratory, hospital or clinic
per se, and therefore the latter must be designed as a
rational design by a competent engineer, or as R158
states, an ‘experienced engineer’. This definition,
however, is not sufficient since it does not define the
level of competence required. It therefore lends itself
to abuse by persons not fully competent or not even
classified as a registered professional engineer, and
who do not possess the necessary level of experience
or expertise. “The difficulty is that there are different types of
laboratories – in industry, schools, testing labs – which
all differ based on what the scientists do and what goes
into it. For instance, there has been rapid growth of
testing laboratories due to changes in emphasis at the
South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) over the past
decade. I’ve personally designed many laboratories,
which typically will have a drainage system with hot
and cold water. With a few exceptions it is not unlike an
ordinary house. The important difference is that it must
have backflow prevention. A mortuary is also a lab, and
for instance you can get back-siphonage after washing
bodies, resulting in body bits and pieces entering the
water system. There are also acids and other chemicals
to be found in a lab, and this often requires special glass
or stainless-steel piping in the plumbing, depending on
the aggressiveness of the effluent.
“The performance of a sanitary drainage system is
specified in SANS10400-P: P2, which forms one
of seven ‘regulations’ of SANS10400-P. The most
important elements of the performance requirements
are that the sanitary drainage system must not cause a “This is an aspect of a ‘rational design’. Regulation
seven provides that you shall not discharge industrial
waste into a municipal sewer system. It must be
collected by a waste company and disposed of. But
there are no details provided in Part P.
October 2019 Volume 25 I Number 8
“The difficulty
faced by
designers of
laboratories
and healthcare
facilities is
that there are
no standards
in force
governing their
specifications.”
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