Drinking Water Hygiene starts at the construction site
Hospitals, in particular, have the highest requirements for drinking water hygiene. Naturally, this applies even more so for renowned institutions such as the Erlangen University Clinic, Germany. In 2009, in a new building with an effective surface in excess of 14,000 square metres, four clinics were combined to form a centre for internal medicine – something that requires out-of-the-ordinary, extremely complicated facility management.
As part of the conversion work, for example more than 40 kilometres of pipes from the Sanpress or the Sanpress Inox product range were installed. They supply the new complex with drinking water, deionised water and fire-extinguishing water. The following central requirements for drinking water hygiene were part of the planning considerations:
• Strict separation of drinking water and fire-extinguishing water using a tank,
• Demand-oriented dimensioning of individual drinking water lines,
• Circulation for hot-water lines,
• Looping of cold-water lines as well as
• Placement of main consumers at the end of a storey distribution system.
Correct storage is where it all starts
During the installation work, the similarly strict avoidance of any contamination of individual pipe sections applied right from the very start. This is why the almost twenty fitters active on the construction site underwent specific training regarding the hygiene-relevant details involved in their work – such as, for example, the storage of pipes and pipe sections generally with plugs, the sealing of open pipe sections using caps or the intermediate storage of the connectors in bags. With more than 150,000 pressings on gunmetal and stainless steel connections, this last point cannot be underestimated.
By the way: Only one of the total of almost 150,000 pressings had a leak after the installation, as was demonstrated during the inspection – and it had simply been forgotten. "However, the SC-Contur of the connectors meant that we could be certain that any pressing that had been forgotten would definitely be noticed. In other words, it could be reworked in good time, which in turn ruled out any damage to the system right from the very start", explains the HVAC specialist.