Surface water management essential at sports complex

The Community Sports Complex in Doncaster has been imaginatively planned and built to the highest architectural standards.

The development integrates sport and community facilities in a spectacular parkland setting.

Doncaster Council is confident it will raise the town’s profile locally, regionally and nationally and help to significantly increase the numbers of local people watching and taking part in sport and other community activities.

At the heart of the complex is the 15,100 capacity Keepmoat Stadium that incorporates an 800 square meter supporters bar, plus a 350 seat restaurant, a gymnasium and martial arts centre. The stadium is complemented by a separate floodlit six lane athletics track with two eight lane straights and its own covered 500 seat mini-stand. Other facilities include two floodlit reinforced and grass sports fields, plus floodlit all weather pitches for five and seven a-side team games, a 10 acre public park and a 1000 space car park.

The location of the Complex meant particular attention was paid to rainwater run-off and pipe depth issues in general. WSP Consulting Engineers were appointed for this part of the project.

In discussion with main contractors Carillion, it was decided to use Hauraton injection moulded Recyfix Super drainage channels around the perimeter of the stadium. 640 metres of channel was eventually specified, plus a further 340 metres of pitch-side drainage inside the stadium itself.

Made from re-cycled polypropylene, Recyfix Super was chosen for being strong yet light enough to comply with manual lifting regulations. Subsequently, 250 metres of the same channel was also used to drain walkways and around the five-a-side pitches. Hauraton also supplied the components for the athletic track water jump and the long jump sand trap.

Being such a large area, the car park and its drainage system were a particularly tricky problem. Colin Taff, Hauraton applications engineer explains: “The larger sizes of Recyfix Super channel were initially considered for the car park.

"However, because of its environmentally sensitive position in relation to the nearby lake, it was essential the depth of drainage was kept to a minimum. It was realised there could only be one outlet at the end of each run, located to one side of the car park.

"Using Recyfix Super would have entail installing too many trash boxes and deep pipe drain’s, therefore a high capacity channel was the only practical solution. After further consideration our newly introduced Recyfix HiCap system was found to answer the problem perfectly.”

Hauraton’s Sales and Marketing Director, Tim Connolly was very pleased with the feed-back from the contractors. “Carillion’s site agent was pleased with the speed at which all the Recyfix channels had been installed, even those that were cut to shape, this apparently saved many man hours," he said.

"The massive investment Hauraton have made in recent years in re-cycled, environmentally friendly products has also provided much lower installation costs for contractors, as proved on this project.”