Plumbing Africa February 2019 | Page 53

FEATURES 51 The outflowing water is set in rotation in the Geberit HDPE Sovent fitting. The new Geberit SuperTube system addresses these flow errors while eradicating the need for a ventilation pipe entirely. In South Africa, the system has already found a home in the Acsiopolis development in Sandton, Johannesburg, with engineers on site indicating their complete satisfaction with the space-saving advantages of the system. PA www.plumbingafrica.co.za The annular flow creates a stable, continuous column of air on the inside, allowing rapid discharge of water. The basic idea behind the SuperTube system is not new. The Sovent fitting was developed in Switzerland back in 1959 and was comprehensively refined and tested in hundreds of varying scenarios before finally being released onto the market in 1970. Since then, it has been installed in thousands of projects, with engineers at the Geberit test facility gradually refining the product over the years to cope with the increasing demands of modern construction. The basic physical concept behind this was constantly being redeveloped until the new Geberit HDPE BottomTurn bend and Geberit HDPE BackFlip bend fittings were more recently created, and these have now also made their way onto the market in the form of an optimal combination known as SuperTube technology. “This technology facilitates a consistent discharge pipe with a pipe dimension of d110, meaning there is no need for a ventilation pipe. A conventional discharge pipe achieves a discharge capacity of 12.4ℓ/s, with pipe dimensions of d160 and an additional d90 ventilation pipe,” explains their website. The Geberit HDPE BottomTurn bend allows the wall of water to break and the annular flow to become a layered flow without disrupting the column of air. February 2019 Volume 24 I Number 12