Gamuda IBS promises no more leaky bathrooms

05 Dec 2018 | The Star

Owners and tenants of high-rise units are likely to be familiar with interfloor and intrafloor leakage, seepage and blockages caused by construction defects or shoddy practices.

Gamuda IBS promises that all these will be a thing of the past when there is widespread adoption of precast bathroom pods, which are manufactured as a single unit in a sheltered environment.

Its new factory in Banting, Selangor, has a dedicated section just for manufacturing bathroom units and to this end it has procured what is possibly South-East Asia’s largest concrete casting moulds.

In the case of clogged floor traps in new housing units, a lot of finger pointing happens between the landlord, developer, main contractor, subcontractor and plumber.

“There is a tendency for everyone saying it is the other party’s fault for debris found in the sewerage system whenever toilets or bathrooms become clogged,” said Gamuda IBS general manager Tan Ek-Khai.

“With Gamuda IBS, the entire unit is already completed within the factory, thus eliminating any wet works on the site – a common cause of blockage when poorly-trained labourers push cement or other waste like tile fragments into the floor trap to avoid doing a proper clean up,” he said.

Pod cast: Precast bathroom pods made at Gamuda’s IBS factory, ready for assembly as seamless plug and play units at the project site.

For a precast bathroom, the entire unit will be hoisted by crane to the required floor and workers will just bolt the whole unit to the building, without applying any cement to the unit. If tiling is specified, the tiles would already be fitted in the factory, and not on site, thus contributing to a drastically cleaner and neater construction site.

These precast bathroom units (PBUs) are made as a single seamless unit, devoid of any joints as each unit is already completed with all the required electrical, plumbing and ventilation connections, besides waterproofed walls, floors and fittings.

“The use of IBS-made bathrooms will put an end to the shoddy habit of improper construction waste disposal into the floor trap. What we designed are basically plug-and-play units that speed up the entire housing construction process,” said Tan.

“Yet, it’s renovation friendly as the tiles can still be changed by the owner later, while the positioning of fittings like mirrors can still be adjusted. Our Banting factory will be able to create a wide range of products, including 16,000 bathroom pods per year, which allows construction to be even more seamless using Gamuda IBS,’’ said Tan.

If you are the type who is obsessed with hygiene, it will be comforting for you to know that no construction worker would have used the toilet unit, which will be sealed during the assembly process.

“In all probability, the owner will be the first person to use the toilet. This is just one of the other side benefits enabled by Gamuda IBS,” Tan quipped.