HMV

The Problem

HMV’s flagship record shop in Oxford Street, London was recently subjected to severe flooding to the right hand flank wall at basement level, which saturated the carpet in the Classical section of the store, with customers literally splashing water over their shoes as they browsed. The cause of the flooding was a combination of ground water ingress, a leaking fire hydrant, rainwater seeping through the external pavement lights and blocked drains.

The Solution

The Timberwise South East Office were asked to overcome all the problems with 1 solution and installed a cavity drain membrane to the walls of the affected area, stretching the membrane diagonally across the soffit (using metal fast track battening to support the soffit membrane and prevent bulging) in order to catch any further seepage through the pavement lights and used an internal peripheral drainage channel set into the slab at the wall/floor junction to drain all the collected water into a sump chamber, which has a dual pumping system and alarm.

The collected water is then pumped out up to ground floor level into the existing drainage system.
Having completed the works and following a routine visit to the store during torrential rain the pumps were removing significant amounts of water whereas the shop itself was dry. Previously that amount of rain would have resulted in several mm of standing water in the basement section of the shop.

A Classical repair some might say!