WCI recently developed a foul drainage strategy, flood risk assessment and overtopping analysis for Burgh Island Hotel, located off the South Hams mainland near Bigbury-on-Sea.
Burgh Island Hotel is an iconic Art Deco landmark and retreat located on a tidal island. The Hotel was built around 1929 and has been expanded to include a range of buildings including the main hotel, a staff residence, separate rental property and a beach-front pub. However, the foul drainage arrangements serving the original Hotel had never been upgraded and were in a state of disrepair.
WCI’s role was thus to provide both the strategic and technical design for the existing Hotel and the multi-million pound expansion plans.
Accessed only via a tidal sand causeway, the design and permitting of a foul drainage solution had its challenges. Ultimately, working with the Environment Agency, WCI presented a wastewater treatment solution which discharges to below the mean low water mark off the sea cliffs to the north of the Island thus avoiding sensitive bathing waters and highly complex treatment requirements.
Careful selection of a package treatment solution was required to address the challenging requirements for buildability. A modular series of tanks has been selected which can independently be craned from the mainland where the access slip is too narrow for vehicular access and which can be hauled up a disused slipway avoiding the listed Pilchard Inn on the main slipway.
This project embodied everything WCI enjoys. Challenging design constraints, sensitive environmental receptors, knowledge of construction methods that enable design rather than constrain it and a delightful location for a site visit.
