Plumbing Pitfalls & Regulations Podcast | Expert Insight…

All right, welcome to Slide Talk, exploring construction with the TikTok Inspector, this podcast, basically what we do is that we uncover the stories, insights and challenges of the construction industry. I'm your host, Sahir aka the TikTok Inspector and together we'll dive into the fascinating world of building and design. So join us as we chat with architects, builders, construction professionals, lawyers and more. We'll explore their experiences, tap into their expertise and gain valuable perspectives on the ever evolving landscape of construction. And join us today is a forensic plumber. His name is Russell Kirkwood from Metropolis Solutions. Russell is a licensed plumber with 25 years experience across large scale commercial projects, heating and cooling, roof plumbing and general domestic plumbing work. He has operated his own business for the past 23 years initially in plumbing and later on in plumbing design consultancy. So yeah, there's Russell. So yeah, do you want to toss a bit about your background and how you came about where you are now? Yeah, no worries. So I actually grew up in Sydney and I did my apprenticeship in plumbing for a local council up there. And so I worked up there till I was 27 and when I was 27 I moved down to Melbourne and took up residency down here and started working in the plumbing industry in Victoria. So around 2006 I took some work working for insurance loss adjusters and from that sort of a bit of a changing moment for me where I started to see a different side of the industry. I was looking through the insurance lens at the plumbing industry which is a much different way to look at it. So I worked for people who were working on the Plumber's warranty scheme in Victoria and so pretty well every ridiculous thing that could happen to plumbers, every stupid thing the plumbers could do ended up with us and we were trying to sort that out for the insurers and for the plumbers. So in 2015 I jumped out of working for the plumbing industry in Trudy Insurance and I with another guy David Pocket formed a business called Metropolis and we offered those kind of services that were at that point only available to insurers to homeowners, body corporates and lawyers. Oh yeah that's yeah and basically you saw this problem with the plumbing industry and that's why you basically started this new business called Dambuster as well. Well yeah at the time when we when we took Metropolis into the marketplace the ideas for Dambuster were already there and so we'd actually you know in I think it was around 2010-2011 when the drought broke the millennial drought broke in in Victoria and so at that point there we just had houses you know flooded all over the country and it was on one of those jobs that I went to I remember it as clear as a day I was looking at this roof on a nursing home down in Jolong and the whole thing was flooded and when we checked the the bomb site to see you know how much water it fell on that roof it was a once in one year rain event and we had a whole flooded nursing home with a once in one year rain event and the penny dropped for me at that point and so from that time on around about 2010 I started thinking about the Dambuster ideas and then in 2015 we patented it and began producing them. So all right thank you for that. One more to ask you as well is that are you able to explain what is basically a breach of the strain is that if you see a non-compliant item during your inspections for the average homeowner what does that even mean? Oh right okay so plumbing you know what I like to say about plumbing is it's it's not a creative pastime it's it's not about plumbers coming up with making up oh I've got this problem with the roof let's fix it this way there are lots of constraints plumbing is either right or wrong it's usually pretty easy to see whether something's right or wrong and so most of the time when people are experiencing problems with their leaking roofs or whatever and they're being told all these you know stories and myths about what's wrong it's because someone hasn't complied with a fundamental performance requirement of either the national construction code or the Australian standards. Yep all right you know the VBA you know are going around and doing these inspections. Doing these inspections and if we look at the latest findings I'll just open it up now they're quarterly kind of findings for plumbing and I was surprised of a total amount of non-compliant items so you can see here and we'll show an extra on the screen later on but we've got total plumbing inspections 1,210 in regional they've got 41% of sites with compliance risks and then you've got in Melbourne 31% so it's a high number. Yeah and what's really crazy about that is they've also excluded all the low, they've got this hierarchy and they've taken out of those numbers the low, the low risk, what they consider low risk and so those numbers are only the higher risk versions. So it's an interesting study it's only 1,210 so really that's not a lot when you consider how massive the Victorian building industry actually is so they're having a look at a snapshot of some houses now I think this study was trying to look at 10% of the the jobs that were currently had a building permit on them or something I'm not sure whether that plumbing number actually reflects that but the reality there is that you know that number they're 41% with defective items it's pretty pretty staggering in a system of self-compliance so you know the plumbing is on their own compliance certificates and say everything's hunky-dory with the standards here I'm signing this offers compliant and the VBA telling us just a simple audit of over a thousand houses showed that 41% of those were not compliant. That's that's amazing and the thing is what I've found interesting is that the VBA has they've got this risk assessment table it's a matrix of colors they've got low risk which is a pass then you've got low risk low impact non-compliance then medium risk and high risk and we're going to put an extract to show you guys how what what they say about each one but you just said before that the plumbing code is either right or wrong one was zero yeah these guys have now got a matrix of saying hey look this is a low risk non-compliance and for example low risk low low low impact non-compliance says it is likely that the non-compliance if left untreated would cause an adverse effect on the safety and the immunity of the occupants financial loss etc but so do they have to fix that or not oh yeah yeah it's it's it's it's an interesting one isn't it like non-compliance means you have to fix it and my experience is that when we're you know hired by our law firms say for instance to prepare documentation for taking to recap you hover up all the defects it's not it's not like I only the really really bad ones that could really damage I mean it's everything and it's all packaged in so at that kind of level where you know it's getting down the vcat and getting really serious definitely this needs to be fixed and my experience is that in the insurance industry as well when there's an insurance claim against a plumber they have to fix all the defects so do you do you actually even references kind of matrix say hey look I found this findings and he's uh yeah do you know what I'm I'm going to be really blind here and say I just totally ignore their matrix oh really when it comes to taking things to to to vcat it's it's it's irrelevant so you just say hey this is non-compliant and this is what the standards say and this is what needs to be done yeah exactly don't just give him this option say mate nah I came to site and it's a bridge of a 35% for three this is the clause and you got to fix it I mean why would you even have this table is I really got confused when I saw that yeah it's it's a way of them trying to uh to to work out what you know might might be damaging the building right at this point time and what might not um so you know I can understand why they're doing it but it's it's not actually how the Australian standards works in relation to plumbing and just a backup section in Victoria every single job that a plumber does has to have a compliance certificate if the value of the work which includes the materials is more than $750 yeah that that that that pretty well is every job that we're sorry within five you see like how long I think I think I read this and it does state that $700 and they have to provide it within five days or seven or I'm not sure yeah it's five days five days who does that like none of the plumbers do that yeah they often miss this it's quite it's quite it it's quite interesting system it's built around consumer protection yeah and so the plumbers have to say that this work has is uh compliant now down the bottom of their certificate there's a little bit that they sign and it says I certify that this work complies with part 12 a the building act now part 12 a the building act um references all of the Australian standards a 3500 and hp 39 hp 114 so when they when they're signing that off that would that be for roofing about for any plumbing that they do they have to uh do it in accordance with the standard so therefore they they're signing away it's going to be per it's going to be perfect every time it's a self-certification system everyone's relying on them the homeowners relying on them the insurers relying on them yeah so how how does uh so the buildings of our doesn't actually check the plumbers work so he the plumber will give that certificate that he reckons it's compliant which you know from your findings most of them are non-compliant when you go on the roof yeah they'll do that like how can they do that sign something that's non-compliant yeah well it's it's an interesting it's puzzling isn't it like you know uh you're signing away to say that work is 100% compliant with the standard and the building survey takes that compliance certificate and pops it in with the rest of the certificates for that house but the building when the buildings if they are received that certificate he doesn't go on the roof to check if he's done it right that's a big problem isn't it it's a self-certification system for plumbers so do you think that needs to be changed i just give us your opinion on it on my opinion uh not you know what self-certification is relying on humans to be very good yeah uh that's not been my experience i mean we can see from the VBA with the with their own findings they go but 41% non-compliant yeah it's interesting you know in in the electrical area they also have non-compliance and they don't have nearly the same issues that we have in plumbing uh and that's because they have another another section of licensing for um inspectors so there's private inspectors for electrical uh we don't have that for plumbing yeah so i'm probably the closest thing to a private inspector for plumbing um and i go out there working for the lawyers against the plumbers if there was uh another another licensing uh category for uh an inspector in plumbing then maybe that would help um we'd add some little costs here and there but i'm sure it would actually be very helpful for the system oh for sure all right um look i i want to get into uh the rainheads you know we've got um people with people especially roof plumbers they go that that new rainhead design that's what they're calling it with a 25 mil offset from the bottom of the uh barcada yeah how it's fully should be fully open is a new design yeah yeah because the VBAs you know put a adapter on the website standing it's a new thing you gotta start hearing to it however we're gonna put an extra on the screen as well to show that this actual this actual diagram is uh was in hb 39 you said 997 i think you were saying and um hb 114 they actually had that diagram as well yeah yeah so i you know what i actually brought the old copy with me today uh which is hb 39 997 997 997 and then you can you actually open up the page yeah yeah yeah no worries show me this section five this is the rainhead yeah this one comes straight out of the uh the tomb of someone right so if we go looking for a rainhead in here 9 back in 1997 there it is so look at that there's the new rainhead and the thing is i want to ask you this why did hb 39 introduce the netcali design and heaps other other designs and now they've actually reverting back to this old style again okay so uh we'll give you a bit of a history if you can that'll be great yeah rainheads in Australia uh so basically uh the Australian standards is for was the Australian standards that we know them today today came about in um the late 90s about 998 which is interesting right so 997 we had we had this handbook which has as you as i just showed you has a picture of an open faced open fronted rainhead but also has a picture of uh another rainhead in section 5.7.3 which is like an open fronted but they dropped it down a little bit and so there were two conflicting rainhead designs in that in that one handbook so that handbook was current for one year and in 1998 there was a new handbook which was the uh hb 114 which is still uh going in Victoria and uh in that handbook there there's there's only one rainhead which is the open faced one that people are calling you now okay so back in 1998 uh that then went into the Australian standards so in 2003 when the new standard was printed in 2003 it had an open faced rainhead in the standard but that meant there was a conflict between the Australian standards and hb 39 which also has this other rainhead in here which is uh figure 5.7.3 so this this one here got got so we had that that there that's in basically hb 39 997 yeah and then we had we so we had two we had a Australian standard that said it must have an open open above the wheel and one that said you could do this which almost achieves the same thing but not quite right the problem was that the Australian standard version as 3503 had all the calculations and measurements and how to do it and the other one had nothing yeah okay so it it was uh a guest a guestimate okay there was no way of sizing it properly or connecting it in with the rest of the drainage system unfortunately that particular handbook the hb 39 997 that uh that stayed in print uh in it in that same format until 2015 yeah so it's a long time you know yeah yeah until now it's still not updated yeah and then so then um there's only been one amendment amendment sorry to to hb 39 which happened in 2021 uh and it was um amendment one and it took out figure 5.7.3 oh there you go and it also um which meant that the only rainhead that was acceptable in any format was the one in the Australian standards which requires the uh the front of the rainhead to be open above the weir and the weir 25 millimeters below the sole of the box gutter all the place so a is 3500.3 so we had the first hb 39 997 hb 114 998 yep and then a 3500.3 when did that? 2003 that now. 2003 came out and hate and basically it had the open it was open it was open yeah just to show people exactly what happened with each one yeah and uh and now like now at from this moment uh since sorry 2022 that this line that at Kelly design can't use it anymore no there's no there's no such thing this this whole myth of the net Kelly rainhead you know uh he's very Australian yeah yeah uh context it's just it's just not there it doesn't it has no hydraulic backup okay so that that person designed this uh i had to book down one way ticket no one you know that why i stand is that uh they did some testing on on this figure 5.7.3 at our MIT uh university oh wow yeah um but then they lost the testing for a long long time and uh so no one really had any sort of backup for it and uh so you mean that they lost the lost actual paperwork or they yeah apparently they lost the paperwork they're when with it oh so there was so there was some testing and they lost it yeah and then you know obviously do it again it's gonna cost more oh yeah but it's also it's also be outdated because uh so this is the old figure this is the one that we got rid of right so the problem with that is it says it says here that you've got a you've got to leave you can lift the rainhead up to 50% of the flow rate yes yeah now that's super confusing because everybody would normally think oh you know i've got a box gutter and the box gutter is 100 say it's 100 mil deep yeah oh i lifted up to 50% of that so that i'll lift it up 50 mil that's not actually what it's saying it's saying 50% of the flow rate oh yeah right now flow rate within a box gutter is a very tricky beast okay yeah it's not where you think it is the deepest part of the box gutter can be upstream and it's actually one of the shallow parts of the box gutter is right down at where it enters the rainhead and so if you have to work out that first of all you've got to work it out difficult and if you guess it you might say okay i'm going to my maximum depth here might be 50 mil that means i'm going to be 25 mil yeah above the the front of the the sole of the box gutter but that is a complete that completely overrides some one of the basic principles of AS 35003 which the box gutters are free flow yeah so you're putting a bit of a weir in front of the box gutter and so it just doesn't work hydraulically so that's why it's been gotten rid of they've eventually taken it away yeah and but they haven't done a great job of telling people at this point that they actually have done it most of them don't even know yeah exactly right and we get a lot of inquiries through our social media saying hey can you please let me know which clause it states that i have to use this kind of rainhead and i'm like it's actually on the VBL website and you can't even find it properly yeah it's very hard it's hard yeah and amendment one isn't you know HB 39 hasn't been reproduced yeah it's just had a amendment so you'd have to actually go to the Australian standards and look for the amendment to actually see whether there's been a change there yeah and you know half the time when i'm dealing with plumbers but when we have a discussion and they disagree they go to the truck and they pull out the 1997 version yeah and hand it to me and i'm like well you know it's a little bit out of date oh my god but they're liven they're liven in 90s may not just on triple M they're liven in the 90s oh my god i wanted i wanted to also ask you when i was on the VBA website i downloaded this audit sheet that the VBA uses this VBA audit sheet is this for the actual VBA you know inspectors the plumbing inspectors going to site and undertaking inspections because i'm looking at it and it's saying level one has the roof drainage system being designed and size appropriately like if someone's come on the site and he has to do those items is the discharge capacity adequate for the catchment like this is complex stuff and how can how can you do this on site within 45 minutes or an hour for example yeah this is what do you reckon yeah this is this is this is really interesting so the VBA audit system so first of all the VBA audit are small percentage of plumbing jobs so you know from what i can see on the VBA their their own documentation is they they're getting around if you're lucky 3% of plumbing jobs now there's a lot of plumbing jobs done every month you imagine if you've got to give a compliance certificate on every job done in Victoria that's over $750 that's it just rains compliance certificates down there okay and so the other interesting thing about compliance certificates is i could build a multi-story building with 400 apartments in it and give one compliance certificate or i can build you know a block of townhouses and i might give one compliance certificate for every townhouse or i might only give one compliance certificate for the whole lot so sometimes it's it's a little bit deceptive and so they're there 3% of jobs is a very very small amount of the jobs that they're looking at so when they're turning up on the job to look to look at this they they have their iPad just like we've got here and they walk onto the job and they say i'm here to audit your your place the homeowner has to sign them onto the property and then they come in to have a look at it so my experience is that these these things just just ticked off now and my experience as well as well as experience of many many plumbers that have spoken to me is that the audit inspectors haven't been able to access the roof even when ladders are provided so you know they they ring you up they ring the plumber up and say hey we need you to provide access to us you put the ladder up ready for them they turn up they don't climb the ladder so then you have these questions which start you know with this has the restraining system been designed and sized appropriately you know how complex that is yeah uh most plumbers haven't done any calculations most plumbers could not provide any documentation to prove that and yet that still gets ticked off uh actually uh before we go to the other items uh you know hb uh sorry a 353 if we jump to that and then you want to we want to go to uh the part where the general method oh yeah so 3.3.7 is your what you're looking for yeah 3.7 and have a look at this flow chart like is this what they have to do to to basically see if this complies or not like look at this table we've got 15 uh 13 steps for uh sorry where is it here flow chart for a general method for designer box going to some or side overflow device we've got nine 15 steps they vary actually so very reasonable so what we've got it starts on um page 32 at section 7 3.7.4 does one procedure so this is this is amazing stuff and most people are ignorant of this okay so uh so the VBA are asking in their audit for audit people to look for the calculations um and we'll also get to them asking for people to use a general method so this is the general method the general method starts in section 3.7 of the Australian standards AS 353 2021 yeah you pass through the general method which is just basically trying to explain how to do design work yeah and then you get to this bit which is the design procedure so this is trying to back up to say how you've done it okay there are four there were three A B and C ways to do it because there's only three devices in the Australian standards for discharging a box cutter yeah there's a rain head there's um some and side overflow so um pretty people are pretty familiar with that that um product and then there's this mythical beast which which is the some the some high capacity overflow device which if you've seen one of them you're pretty lucky okay so there's these three devices now if you then flip to page 32 we start this quite confusing um step list uh so we've got for a rain for a box cutter discharging to a rain head there are 13 steps of pain now the VBA they have to basically go through this process oh this is only when you want to when you want to design the box cutter system you actually go through that but don't they have to go through this to see well they're basically they're all at least they're saying we want to see some calculations where are the calculations how do we know it's been sized correctly so you can't guess the calculations this is you know for instance you know the you know the very first step here is determined the AEP which is the average exceeded probability for the site now you know that varies for every suburb in Australia so someone's got to look that up either in the Australian standards or via the Bureau site on longitude and latitude so this is where it gets complicated so that that number is going to vary quite considerably even from you know Melbourne to Frankston yeah let alone Sydney to Melbourne to Adelaide to Brisbane to Darwin you know so then then you go through these steps and you know you you follow through 13 steps that's the size one box cutter rainhead combination yeah now if you then flick to the next one which is the the some side overflow which people are familiar with yeah it's got more steps how many is it got 15 15 steps you got quite complex mathematics to do here yeah most most most this mask mask is going to boggle most people I know I've handed this to engineers who've looked at me strangely when when when I asked them to do this I didn't architect the other day who queried me about something I'd done yeah so I sent I sent that person the the 15 steps for this device here I never heard from them again so you know and then you go to the you know as I call it the mythical beast of the of the high capacity overflow and wow we we max out here at 17 steps 17 steps well now if you want to see how those step what that looks like in reality you have to go to you have to go down to the there's another section called it's a appendix h h if you go over to appendix h this is the general method design example so it's those flowcharts that we were looking at just there before filled out yeah so what you start to see here is they give you an example it's an example figure 1.1 is a pretty straightforward building like this is you know typical of the Australian standards which imagines that we're using box gutters on factory roofs or you know a sort of factory roof or something and so that looks like a pretty easy example it's giving you all these sizes yeah walls and everything it gives you the charts that you should be looking at and then whoa on a page 150 there's there's there's the whole design example that we were looking at all 15 steps 13 steps of it filled out the last time most plumbers did this was at trade school yeah they might they probably did it in their course but then most of them completely forgot it because no one's using it out there now what's something really interesting and plumbers have to know this right now because the VBA released a new practice note roof plumbing Rp 0.2 so if you if you want to bring this up it's yeah yeah so basically this came out um August uh 23 yeah August 23 the first of August August yeah it's a hot off the press basically this thing yeah wow so they've got that and if you scroll down to deem to satisfy design and installation parameters for box gutters we're not going to go through the whole list but we've hollowed it some sections and what what do you think of this here they they're actually saying the depth of box gutter and sizing of some strain it's downpiles and overflows must be designed using uh the general methods specified in AS 3500.3 wow so tell me yeah this is a big one yeah so that means everything your job that you and I look at yeah should have a demonstradable proof that somebody's sized it using the general method which is what were you were just talking about right now this has been 17 steps 15 steps you've got to do those calculations and just don't just don't get people to get their head around this okay so you go down to your local plumbing store and you buy a 90 degree PVC bend 100 millimeter 90 degree sewer bend okay that bend's got a watermark on it and it's been through a whole bunch of processes to say how that works how much water goes down it how it's been certified so that you can actually pull that into a system yeah now when you come to roof drainage you can't you know up until very recently you couldn't go anywhere and get a product yeah that had any sort of certification like that and so the only way that you can certify as a plumber that are a plumbing installation for roof drainage is compliant with the Australian standards like that's what DTS means yeah it means deemed to satisfy the performance requirements of the Australian standards is is to do the calculations so you become you become the person who's following the the steps to show how you do it yeah now when we're going out and looking at you know completely stuffed up drainage systems one of the questions we asked to the plumbers either you know personally or through the lawyers sometimes yeah is where's your demonstradable proof of DTS they're going to have that they can't they can't they can't come up with it oh wow right and so that's that's where it all falls down because suddenly you got the VBA against you as well here yeah now yeah so what happens if somebody can produce this DTS like does calculations what happens like is their penalty that that they I mean obviously it's not it would be non-compliant because it failed and they can't produce it this deemed to satisfy design yeah well it means it means that the design was guest and there is no design it's a guess the guesstimate oh wow so it means that you know you've you've gone down to your multi-million dollar block of flats or for your house in two rack or something you've put the design the roof on but you guessed it he guessed it um uh he guessed certified it yep and the surveyor also said yeah he's happy with it yeah it's just crazy people people go nuts people if they actually understand that that there was this little thought going into it yeah they go they go crazy because people are actually trusting a registered building practitioner yeah who's a plumber where's the building practitioner who's fully insured and he's the he's actually guessing the roof design yeah certifying you know and saying hey man I've done it the VBA doesn't check it unless there's a it's being flag basically they come in well he's got he's got a less than 3% chance of getting an audit and we know they don't climb others yep but like I've got a drain you know and sometimes when I can't access the roof I actually you know get the drain up there it's very hard to go to basically confirm if for example like a high-capacity um overflow some design it has to be 150 mil there packing we can't we can't do that with the drone we can't do that so you actually have to get up there and it's hard work you know it's hard work get down there and measure everything and checking everything yeah which is what we do we go out and you know when we're doing forensic investigation yeah we're basically doing an as built uh design so we're going out to the building going this is this big this is this big we're as building it and then we'll go away and we'll actually do the calculations here yeah and most of the time the job you know they don't stand up sometimes you know sometimes people what they've done in the past is they've oversized things so you know they've had all these problems so you know and their idea is you turn up and there's this box gutter that's like ginormous you know it's like one me at a long time man I know what I was ponding you know I had one guy he said I've done the best thing here it's 800 mil wide and I'm like you've got to be kidding you mate you're outside the Australian standards now you need to perform a solution oh my god I was just wondering what happens if it goes over that no no it's it's you're still going to get a performance solution you still got a performance solution you know because your the the Australian standards is is between you know in box gutters it's between 200 mil wide it's 600 mil wide as soon as you're bigger than that things start to happen like water goes slowly like you know what I mean like yeah it you've made it so wide it's like the ganges it's so somebody does that design oversize it just shows that this guy it hasn't done a DTS hasn't done his and you know well we then do the calculations and we find that it's got two liters of second running down it and it can be 200 box gutter you know so they've lost all of the cleaning and flashing capacity by making it too big yeah but this is the guesstimate you know I always fix these up I always make our box gutters 600 mil wide no matter what and it's just it doesn't there's not how the Australian standards works it's it's always working to measure it to the to the actual area of the roof there's also a point here uh in in the new update they got they say that box gutters must be straight without a change of direction and discharge all the downstream and without a change in direction i.e. not to the side now this is uh basically uh you know a lot of reformers know about this and it's it's it's common and sometimes the architects actually incorporate that design a change of direction and they still do it till now you know and uh what what was going to what was going to tell us uh a roof plumber approached me the other day and he goes hey we do a lot of renovation works for older homes and we need to change direction uh off a box gutter you know we need to do that is there some device that we can use that can help us with that section and kind of uh comply with the standards and I said maybe check that downbuster they do have uh basically a performance solution for their product they have a uh actual product that can enable the change of direction but it's called a change of direction stamp as you were saying did you want to explain uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so so this all comes out this is all happened organically okay so what as i explained we were uh you know we were working you know the people who made damnbuster yeah we're working in the insurance industry either in engineering side of it or um lost adjusting or plumbing side of it and so we were dealing with absolute mayhem in regard to uh the failed box gutter systems in Australia because we've changed the way that we build houses in Australia you know when i don't know when i you know i'm 50 years old now so you know i grew up in a firebrush house in Sydney i call it a shack it was a house uh but you know we had a pitch tile roof five row walls and bigger even hangs over the house and it used to flock down with rain and i don't remember a water leak in our house okay it was a simple old house but it didn't leak uh we don't build houses like that anymore now we we cram them onto the site we build to the absolute maximum of the block yeah yeah and so uh we're having to get creative with the roof designs to be able to do this we've got setbacks which mean we're going to have to have flat metal deck roofs on the on the lower floors and often on the top floors as well so box gutters become very helpful for the designer yeah to actually be able to to maximize the amount of space that's being utilized on that property i get you all the more is that the Australian standards never enviaged yeah that that would happen it thought box gutters were limited to domestic commercial buildings yeah and of factories and and places like that now we're using box gutters in a totally different way and so when when i was working in the insurance industry was when this was all happening and we were starting to see the the first problem for this because you have to remember that we had a millennial drought so we changed doing things what when it stopped raining oh yeah it did a rain it just it hardly rained in Australia for 10 years right which is didn't and then when it went a bucketed down and and it continued to rain heavy rain constant rain right through until now basically uh we've had all these problems and the problems were laid back to the design so when people are building these buildings they run into problems they're going to run into design issues which are always going to mean they've got to change direction now they're caught by the Australian standards that says no change in direction and so we were caught by that as well and so when we were fixing their places up yeah we had no way of fixing them so we found ourselves you know changing the pitch on roofs and doing crazy enormous tasks to try and meet the Australian standards um and it was then that i you know um couple of us started asking questions and one of the questions we asked was why can't you change direction yeah like it says it but why can't you and we choded off to um associate professor Robert Keller from Monash uni and he's probably one of Australia's leading one of the world's leading experts in hydraulic design particularly open channels into lovely guy and he he said to when we walked in and said to him hey uh hey Rob why can't we change direction and he said why would you want to do that people are building this way and yeah and he went oh i'd never know my years no one's ever asked me that question right he'd written 120 papers on open channel drains and so we were able to work with him to say well what first of all why does Australian standards say it yeah and the short answer there is if uh if you run water really fast down a box cutter and then change it 90 degrees really quickly the water doesn't go straight around the corner yeah it hits the back wall and as the flow rate increases because the flow rate is constant it's not like you know just a big flusher water down there it's a constant thing and so that water hits the back wall and you get a hydraulic sort of wave that backs back up the drain and so you get a flooding in that corner in the 90 degree change corner which deposits debris rubbish in there and then also means that the box cutter is no longer free flow and because it's no longer free flow it doesn't meet the Australian standards so yeah so we were able to work with well the Keller and create a system where we could drop down in that corner um speed the water up into the corner and then the water goes round the corner into another straight section of box cutter yeah and we've got and uh i've asked you to bring that device with you because i actually want to show people uh that there is a solution or that that complies you've got to perform a solution sorry yeah yeah the so the dam bus the products were all uh created with Robert Keller yeah um and uh we also did testing uh up in the university of sunshine coast lovely place uh with another professor of hydraulics called professor Terry Luki so between the two professors there's an awful lot of experience yeah and so we were able to overcome some of these issues uh now we've certified all of our products as dts via expert judgment so deemed to satisfy via expert judgment yeah uh which is allowed under the national construction code uh and so you can look that up in the national construction code and that's so with somebody buys one of your products it's you know for use in the plumbing industry it's actually comes with its own performance solution yeah well sorry uh it's got both it's got both it's got both it's got it's got it's got three performance solutions are free on our website yeah so you only just have to download them and utilize them in the job and uh you need to get the stakeholders to agree and there's a few conditions there but yeah all the data and everything you need to do a performance solution is there with their master and there is also the potential to do it with dts via expert judgment if your regulator is is is happy to accept that now in victoria the vba have been a bit slow to take that up yeah uh you know we're having discussions with them you know pretty pretty good discussions with the vba on this issue but you're probably safest to use our performance in victoria for their master products yeah sweet so i'm gonna we're gonna show how how it works will bring it up and we'll just show the guys how you know how it streams and all that stuff is explaining thanks a lot Russell for this this is the basically the box got it right there and if you if you come inside you don't have a look you can see how there's a sticker right there that says damn buster and also there's a in a basic uh an edge inside uh a little stamp that says damn buster as well but this is now we've got the sampia yeah so explain what's going on here yeah no worries everybody okay so this is this is a basic this is our most popular product okay so this is uh damn buster R300 rainhead and a TSO side outlet yeah so basically these products they've got a adjustability building to them so you know if somebody's built the box got a a bit bigger than it probably needed to be or something like that we can get some adjustability and it also helps with retro feeding as well yeah so we've pre-drilled with the laser cut we've done this so this is like beautiful you know your product can look fantastic you see their quality in the folding and the joints and everything here it's actually like what is it thick thick as well yeah it's really it's it's a good thickness material are we only use really high quality blusco product and so this is uh this is our best device yeah so once you know your box got a section is just drop in here people people always worried they're trying to fold them down and do stuff all they have to do is run silicon across here and drop the box gutter in yeah we're going to pull this apart now and just have a have a really good look at how it goes yeah so you've got this sort of short short some area that then runs to the rainhead this is your internal box in the Australian standards so you know just come and have a look in here right so when we're looking back at the Australian standards you got that open open faced rainhead yeah it says you shall have you know nothing above the we are now what we've got here is there's a we are we've got nothing above the we are it's open faced into this area here and then the water shoots straight down okay this is your paint at the design this is our paint in the design you created this this is a very sound it's really sound hydraulic principle okay so what you have to remember is like that overflow there has been tested the 16 liters a second it doesn't mean that's where it stops we know that that overflow will do far more than 16 liters a second but we stayed within the parameters of the Australian standards so all of our products it's really clear when you know you start looking at products the small one the 200 version 16 liters a second the 300 version 16 liters a second the 416 liters a second yeah and so where's the stop is here but you can keep pumping water into this it will it will keep taking it out so we also noticed that cover there oh yeah yeah this is cool what is this okay so if you are digging deep into the Australian standards in a hand box you suddenly realize that where where this goes through the parapa wall yeah the underside of the parapa wall is open that means rats birds anything can get in there so it becomes like a spot for the vermin to get into the building and also if you got water running down the walls on the parapa the water can get into this section and down around the outside to be honest I've never seen a cover like that what I never said when I speak box covers that's never there yeah because the things with them must have we've been looking into the standard yeah so it's going to the bridge of the Australian standards if it's like covered you can add this to the list mate all right let's go and so this slides in here and then the farmers can lift that up to any level they like to do that here and then and then they rip it from the inside fully fully and close and then they can incorporate that into the fashings on the inside of the wall it enclosed have a look at this fully enclosed in the parapa wall nice and professional yeah compliant absolutely yeah but I just love this how you've got the already stitched up to us so it's all don't have to measure anything no in all the labs are in the direction of flow all that kind of stuff they thought even that as well look at that yeah see you thought of everything we tried man we tried so if we just let that sit that's gonna sit there let's just have a look at the rain head right this is this is our best product right this is beautiful I love this thing this is just a piece of industrial design okay so basically we've got a seal at the back here which is part of our patent yeah so the funny thing is the Australian standards always draws the rain head and the box got it joined together yeah now how do you do that right so what we've done is we created a really good seal here that allows the plumber to put in a whole bunch of silicon in here and then they lay their box gutter and you know a lot of them don't like doing this but they can just lay it flat there okay so what that means is you don't get that annoying drip people hate it man yeah especially in multi-unit residential with his rain heads all over the place or when it rains this way you can this way you can have this just the box gutter is just sitting in here you know if you use this as an example of the box gutter it just sits like that it's a really nice nice fit and the water then just runs down the end of face and does drip into the rain head and then we've got our protection of the product do you want to get this have a look at this yeah a little bit hard to see on the black one yeah but uh we've got db 300 written on here so that that's that's only able to be done with a laser cutter yeah and we've also got other little marks and stuff that no one knows about in these products right which which means that they're very clearly look it's really ours it's your design I mean you come up with this it looks really it looks sexy the whole thing yeah the complain rain head from 3500.3 you can see the box gutter it just looks ugly you can see all the box gutter not even a mother could love that thing it is just ugly I see them they're like learing mouths of like clowns or something you know they're horrible um and no one no one would want that on the house and that's a good enough reason to fill out two bits of paper and get a performance solution yeah so you know and then you can have this which is a it's a beautiful piece of um basically that's true design I mean that's just on your look look at this it looks so nice you can't see any holes anywhere and the overflows right there yeah and that overflow is way beyond the capacity that love check this out you've even incorporated this little lip here yeah so where does this charge yeah it's a drip it's a drip line a drip line so our name plate actually equates to a drip line and so you don't get that water running back and then coming down the wall that's what I mean you thought of everything and for an extra 10 20 bucks you missing out on all this all this high quality material yeah yeah yeah and then the thing is people just need to embrace the product pump process of truck plumbing right yeah yeah this is made a different way it's quite easy for these for companies to to get onboarding and get this product out there to people let's go back to the podcast and see what else what else going on out there man let's go all right thanks for showing us those products really appreciate it now I want to continue with the list from the RP2 from the vba another one is that all box gutters must incorporate provision for expansion now it also states where the distance between fixed points exceeds six meters and the appropriate intervals for the materials and situations as prescribed by the standard which is 3500.3 now can you explain this point right here this is this is really interesting hey so so first of all it says all box gutters must incorporate provision for expansion all right right now I reckon that that doesn't get that this doesn't go into people's ears okay because you you see it I see it when we're looking in box gutters measuring to see how big they are and stuff all we see are screws bang through the side walls of box gutters oh you mean the you mean the plastering screws yeah yeah the gold the goldies the goldies whatever was laying around whatever was laying around but they just I do see it all the time yeah yeah now the crazy thing about that is the vba are absolutely right there when they say box gutters require expansion provision now the moment you put a screw into a box gutter you've stopped at expanding you've fixed it oh well you know what I I did not know that yeah so if they screw it anywhere the hole in place for some temporary reason for example they just say it's temporary that you've actually created a fixing point absolutely so so the standard is that box gutters are free to move okay and then also what what it's saying so if we go to a 3500 tree and we look at our on page 42 I think it is there's this section here which is called thermal variation four point three yep so this is all about expansion joints so this also backs up what the vba is saying but it gives you much much more information than what the vba are putting in their their roofing update so there's a table here table 4.3.2 which is where you need to go for this kind of information to find out what you can do and so what you what you realize here is when you when you're looking through this you realize that you're only having to put expansion provision in like where there's fixed fixed fixed points so if a box gutter is free to move like if you had a box gutter that ran to both ends of the building and it had no it just ran into a rainhead at both ends of the building you wouldn't need to put expansion provision on it still might be a good idea to put it at the high point and you know an expansion band or something but you don't actually need to do it because the box gutter is free to expand now the moment you bang some goldy goldy screws in the side of that you've changed everything right and so also the other ways that a fixing might might be is if there's a sump running to a you know pipe which creates a fixing but normally box gutters are meant to be installed so that they can move around they're not meant to expand and contract basically yeah because I do expand and contract yeah so I'm looking at this table right here yeah for example we've got steel and base metal thickness let's just assume it's 0.75 mil and if it's free if it's both ends free to move is states that you can have 50 like every 50 meters you're supposed to incorporate yeah yeah yeah exactly but if you do fix it says one end fixed and other end free to move is states 25 meters yeah but then there's nothing about you know multiple fixing points that's why the VBA said six meters is that is that what they did there yeah that they have and I think up above here it might say no no sorry it does say yeah in 4.3.2 i right down the bottom it says show it whether this is between fixed points exceed six six meters sorry they do have it right there but it's not in the table no it's not in the table so they pick the VBA is picking up on that part yeah and they're sort of not filling in the rest of the information they're not talking about the expansion space that you're meant to have between the end of the box gutter and the frame of the building so often when we're looking at box gutters they're jammed in right tired hard to get to frame so they got nowhere to go and what you have to remember is box gutters sit on top of a roof and one day in Melbourne you know we get four seasons in one day so we're going to have a summer day that's really cold and by the afternoon it's 45 degrees so that box gutters going through a full massive movement range yeah as it expands now if it can't expand what happens is it everything starts to you know get really tight it'll shear rivets it'll break things I've seen some rivets yeah yeah and what you will also see out there which is really really common problem that I'm noticing right is that plumbers put a box gutter in they they get down one side underneath the roof sheets yeah cross and then they go right up to the top of the parapet with the box gutter now that's they're basically trying to get rid of the hanging flashing that would normally be there so they make it in one piece but by doing that they then fix it because otherwise it just goes bang bang bang bang in the wind over all right and then what you'll see is this wobble goes along there and that's called that's called oil canning and that means the box gutters fixed all over the place trying to expand and it can't so so the the the metal sort of buckling and bowing and you'll get fatigue and breakage and leaks as a result of it so that's a breach of the standard so it'll breach of the standard I pin that on jobs all the time oh that's excellent me now it's a no it's a free kick in front of gold mate well I'm gonna you know something cool pretty in that my reports now the more defects are better now another one here out of the really good point as well they've got some requirements of hb 39 conflict conflict with the requirements of a 3500.3 in these situations the requirements of 3500.3 shall be used yeah now let's take it a long time for the say that because they love hb 39 but yeah it's quite clear that the Australian standards takes precedent over that's very good yeah yeah so the handbook's good in many ways it's got lots of lots of good stuff in it but there's stuff in the handbook which is just flat wrong compared when you go to the Australian standard so always basically you gotta you gotta look at both documents if you are you know picking on defects or compliance you gotta have a look at the hb 39 and and also 3500.3 oh absolutely so say for instance the the classic example is the depth of a box cutter yeah so the hb 39 says the minimum depth of a box cutter is 75 millimeters yeah for a for like for any for any box cutter yeah so that's what it is for any box cutter yeah yeah so it's just magic it's the magic number okay 75 mil now we could never work out what was going on there because when we were looking at the Australian standards there wasn't 75 mil high for a box cutter now the thing is if you do put certain coordinates into there yeah you'll come up with the only size of sidewall height that will match the Australian standards at 75 mil is a 600 wide box cutter running at three liters a second on a 1 in 40 slot that's galloping down the hill so basically if we were to assume that we're going to go with 75 mil depth at the high end yeah as per hb 39 and then we look at the graph from 3500 yeah it's going to stay hey you need to actually the box cutter has to be 600 mil wide 600 mil wide only three liters a second yeah right so it's you're not going to get that many square meters of roof into that and then not only of all that that most most rooms we're going one in 200 slope this is a one in 40 slope so uh so that's that's going really steep yeah oh yeah that's that's the only way you can get a 75 mil sidewall height I mean if a roof plumber let's just say I want to I want to ask something if a roof plumber goes hey before they said this the VBA if a roof plumber says hey I've actually used hb 39 and it states 75 mil literature sound with the roof plumber and I did that yeah 75 mil I put it in I've listened to the standard and now that these guys are telling me to change it otherwise as a roof plumber what do you think he can do you know what I mean he's caught now I kind of feel sorry for them because like the the problem with hb 39 is just got poor English you know the way you in the old version it was it was just plain wrong in the 1997 version it was plain wrong but in the 2015 version they didn't actually change it but they changed a few words around it so now are you need to check to go to the Australian standards okay but they still kept a 75 mil in there which isn't right so and we're telling you right in that one instance that I told you about yeah but what do you think a roof plumber can do like in terms of liability like his stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm just saying like if I'm a roof plumber doing that job huh man I tried to use hb 30 and on it told me 75 mil and I did that and it wasn't requirement for me to cross check 3500 now what what what what what I do as a roof plumber like if somebody wants to sue me now yeah well they're telling he's going to happen they're going to use the Australian standards they're going to go oh so he's basically they're going to use the Australian standards on you um you know they're going to get medieval on you on the strings oh my god that's a bit so he can't sue the VBA say man it's your fault you can't do that absolutely oh damn it man so now if I go down the next page and you know what this is probably I just want to talk about this last thing from this document right here if you go to page two page two sorry not page two this is page four the dog photo C image run photo C where they have a box gutter yep we look at the um this page right here and uh the C the C the C basically photo yep it shows that the box gutter is discharging into a sump and then basically the sump discharges directly to Iranian now I did an inspection yesterday for this home like a mansion of a home yeah yeah and all they have is this design yeah so plumbers call these plumbers like to call this side some shoots that's a good name five some shoots as per a 3500 yeah yeah yeah you go looking for them you won't find it yeah right so it's a it's a hybrid um so like like there are similarities between these and what we use in the dam buster are range so we're using something similar yeah the difference is we've tested it we've got evidence of suitability for DTS fire expert judgment and we've got performance solution so we've got all the all the ducks are are aligned up the problem here is the VBA pointing out you you can't do this because they're saying hey that's a change of direction in a box gutter yep it's often not done very well okay so when when we get down and we put this under the microscope you stick your GoPro down and you start having a look what most of the time they've done is it's slid a piece of box gutter under the gutter and then they've so what they've effectively done is drop the level of the spill level of the box gutter so if you get blockage in there the box gutter itself doesn't flood some floods and then straight into the building oh okay so it's worth it's worthwhile chucking the camera in there to have a look oh wow yeah you get new in the photos of this but there's often a lot of space in there for water the leak yeah so it's a bit of a problem and you know what there was actually a leak both ends it's actually a long box gutter and they have that set up on either side yeah and both sides should inside the home show that there's a leak yeah which is yeah I was surprised and the thing is it does stay in that in that caption examples of non DTS so non DTS box gutter designs yeah installation but the thing is your setup for this scenario you've got to set up for that scenario absolutely damn buster I've got this absolutely covered yeah and we've but we've tested it the difference is you and you've got you've got the documentation we got the documentation you have to go calculate enough you know I mean it's all done for you I say hey man this is my design scenario for this complex home for you yeah absolutely and all right here's your performance solution yep done and he's a product yeah he's a product and also the product itself is been made beautifully right so the plumbers aren't trying to you know hash this together on site and you're not trying to you're not exceeding their level of skill yeah to try and put this in yeah so you've got something which is custom made ready to go all slots together as you saw before in the video it all slots together nicely the everything's everything's just made perfect for you plus it's got the documentation and the evidence of suitability yeah so basically guys I'm going to be totally honest we're not getting like so I don't want any money from the from them buster and they're not paying me for anything this is just to help the construction industry the plumbing industry you can see from the high high percentage of non-compliant items you know through the VBA you know all this stuff there's a massive problem in the plumbing industry and he has got a solution an easy solution to make everything you know easy to apply in the plumbing industry you know and basically we just want to help the industry out that's all we're doing and people think are we getting paid what's more talk about this but this is a solution that people are not looking into and it's very important to incorporate these designs and save the headache you know from you going there and and coming up with performance solutions you know and and doing all this calculation all done for you all fabricated done and I mean you can you saw from how good it looks as well everything's you know all the stitching you know more than 40 miller part done everything properly yeah we've we've gone to that next level to make these things work you can tell you're holding your hands compared to you know what how dodgy are those are those rainheads a cup of the rainhead oh man you know what the thing is right what people need to understand about damn buster is we're innovative not just in the sense that we're trying to solve some of these problems as we discussed before you know we were asking professors hydraulics how do we get how do we how do we fix this because you can't tell the Australian building industry that it can't change direction where the box cutter yeah it's the the fundamental is that most properties are longer than they are wide therefore the box cutters are always going to be on the sides yeah right so you need to be able to change direction people don't want rainheads on the front of the house so therefore they need to be able to do it in a way that's actually achievable so so it's you know one thing to say it's non-compliant the other thing is you're now then to have to look at we have a way of making it compliant yeah which is safer and also when I said our products were made not just innovative in the way they do things like this they're innovative in the way they made so our products are all a program like for solids works and so that that solid works program means every single one's the same that's how we keep quality and therefore then they're made and folded automatically so all the tolerances are like tiny yeah the line the the river holds line up everything's perfect yeah every single time I can tell because when I when I when I even hold the dam bus the rainhead it's actually it feels heavier than the other ones that there's thinner metal for thinner metal it's a piece of industrial design yeah that's what it is and the other the copied ones they haven't got the proper testing and oh my you know don't get me started seriously this is my world these guys these guys are mad so first of all first of all you copy a dam bus to product okay if you're not copying off like the the the solid works program which you don't have any access to because only licenses have that right you're you're you're making a blind you don't know how you're making it you don't know what we're doing to make that product so you're having to like you know measure it and make it most of the ones I see that are out there and you see them I see them in your videos you know they're crap absolutely crap yeah you know then the sizes don't match up they're what we call poor copy so what people are doing is going oh geez we don't want to get in trouble for patenting this so we'll change it by 20% and that means we'll get out of it now long behold we thought of that yeah we've got poor pop poor copy patent so if they copy us in any way they're gone but the main problem is they don't have any evidence of suitability for DTS by expert judgment they don't have any backup for performance solution if the house floods the they got nowhere to go right and so what's going to happen is that the the householders insurer is going to walk out walk on to the job and go flooded house well we'll fix up the damage to the parker tray French parker tray flooring when you fix the roof which is going to cost a hundred grand or more yeah so you're telling me if the insurance come and that they discover that they you've got a non conforming product there yeah you're gone gone you're gone so if you don't use Danbuster and by the way all Danbuster products are marked Danbuster so they've either got a sticker a serial number or it's laser engraved into the product yeah yeah yeah so it's pretty easy and that's going to become more and more and more easy for people to do right so what you what you realize is that you're risking the homeowner's own insurance and when a homeowner can't get their you know their French oak floors fixed yeah they're going to come after the plumber yeah right they're going to come after the plumber and next thing there's going to be a lawsuit for sure so these people and to save how much I'll tell you that's the difference between the the the copied rainhead and the compliant rainhead the the conforming rainhead is like literally ten twenty dollars very thirty dollars yes yeah yeah I mean come on that's why it drives me crazy when I see one even when I'm driving to work and I actually shopped the car and take photos and I report it yeah you know I go I know you send me the photos it's like it's it's just a nightmare for everyone involved and and also what people don't understand is the building survey is responsible for this as well because you know he hasn't he hasn't insured that there's not there's conforming building products on that on that site also it's a build the surveillance it can also be a building surveying issue so yeah and so yeah you know we're always going to have people who do the wrong thing yeah but it doesn't benefit anyone and also it takes away the numbers from the legitimate people who are making downbuster yeah so we we license downbuster to people we don't set a price for it it's set by the market and so the more people who use downbuster the cheaper and cheaper it's going to become so just want to go back one point like if the building surveyor who does the final inspection walks onto a site yeah yeah and and all you gotta do is look up on the you know the wall then you can see a non-comp uh a copied downbuster yeah even if it's the the the the real downbuster yeah the original one should the building surveyor be asking their builder say hey you've got a rainhead not us per 3500.3 even those got a certificate of compliance should he also ask the the builder say hey I need the performance solution for these rainheads yeah if if it proves that performance solution is the only way to go so in Victoria at the moment that's how the VBI treating it yeah so yes in Victoria Victoria you need to make sure that performance solution is with the building surveyor yeah uh if uh you know in the future that may not be the case but when we're 100% sure at this moment we're we're negotiations with the VBA to see we can free that system up a bit yeah but at the moment absolutely the building surveyor needs to be saying hey where's the performance documentation for this oh good so we'll see how we go yeah but that's uh we're here really interesting one um which by the way our performance documentation is free on the website yeah so you can download on the website as well but the thing is would people go um and download that for the copied ones well they can but it doesn't do them any good okay so it's it's it's not going to do you any good and certainly not going to do you any good if the house is flooded or if you're in a court court case situation well if I go to a job site and I do find uh you know a fake dam bus and then we see that they've used your paperwork to sign off a non-compliant sorry a non-compliant rainy because it is not compliant yeah it's not your one um they can get even into a deeper trouble oh I just get to worse and worse it's just not worthwhile right you know like and for ten twenty dollars you know what people just need to you know what call me up I'll give a ten ten ten bucks man just get the proper one you know what it's it's it's like you innovate and then people copy you yeah and they're not even getting the value of it they're not they're not getting the value right they're not understanding that there's a lot of smart behind this yeah yeah exactly right it's just yeah it's it's just it's it's not worth doing all right so also here we've got I want to go back to the actual audit sheet that the VBA uses you know how it said that has the roof drainage system been designed and sized appropriately now AS 353 there's like 17 15 steps yeah yeah to design something and the products that you've got right there on your website you've got a table you've simplified the whole process so you don't have to do this formula oh actually explain this please yeah so uh so when you're using Danbuster even if you're using it as performance solution in Victoria uh so the Danbuster products are pre-sized so every product in our range has a flow rate attached to it so it works between a certain flow rate depending so we're just talking about rainheads for a moment so if you choose an R 300 rainhead it's going to work um up to 9.6 liters I think it's 9.7 liters a second depending on which downpipe you select for it the overflow for that rainhead is 16 liters a second so far beyond the actual weight the the internal part of the rainhead so when when we're looking at um making design easier for people if you go back to those steps in um in in the general method what you'll find is as you go through the steps in um for for the rainhead you get to this one that says now size the overflow devices oh yeah right so you've got to go through size your box gutters then you got to size your overflow devices so when you're using Danbuster all you have to do is size your box gutters and then the Danbuster products plug into that so once you know how many liters per second are coming down that box gutter you just choose from you select from our range and the performance solution looks after you at that point so you don't have to do the 13 steps right you're choosing a proprietary product uh just like you would choose a uh a product from a plumbing supplier that to do a certain amount of water through it so it's it's a much easier system and also what we've done is we've simplified the charts in those horrible charts in Australian standards that drive everyone nuts right yeah yeah so we we were able through our engineering section to look at those come up with a single equation that actually ran ran the charts for free flow box gutter so this works for can you give us that equation I'll put online not yeah yeah we guarding that one but the thing is you you've got a table yeah we've got that table I use that table as well as quick references that are going through that graph man my life chains when that table happened it you know uh Rowan and one of our engineers called me one night and said I've had the Eureka moment I've sorted this and I could do this on a single a four piece of paper and I'm like you're got to be kidding me and um so yeah we ended up with with with this baby you know yeah and so what this means is that if you know the flow rate yeah and you know what size box gutter you've got this sizes the box gutter for you yeah it's one piece of paper so you've got your flow rate on the example here you got you got uh we've we've chosen six liters a second on a 300 wide box gutter and it's telling me that uh the shallow end of that box gutter is 118 millimeters deep yeah now we tend to round that up to 120 yeah and then for every meter you go downstream you add five millimeters for one in 200 millimeter for super easy yeah right and you can do that for any as you can see you you can you know you've got your flow rates right up to 16 liters a second here and this is all available on the downbuster website under the tech download session in the quick guide page nine of the quick guide yeah so basically makes the whole process for the plumber you know instead of you know it's been created in the job doing all that work yesterday all this calculations and everything's done for you go there what I won't say everything right yeah the problem is you still got to know where you are yeah and how much roof so and then when you know those items you go to that table yep and it saves you a lot of work absolutely now the formula that people have to get their head around and you'll find this in the quick guide as well if if the people are watching this actually just download the quick guide from downbuster yeah sit down one night and I'll put a I'll put an lecture as well it's a beautiful document right no worries and so that document there gives you the formula which is super easy for roof drainage design which is the square area of the roof times the one in 100 year ARI or EAP so for instance that for Melbourne that would be 187 millimeters per hour yeah now what I tend to say to people there's this shortcuts here that they can take so if you're working in say Melbourne yeah we've looked at that and there are no there's not one single suburb in Melbourne that's beyond 200 millimeters per hour in fact there's not many in the whole state of Victoria there's only really Malacuda and in the high country yeah that goes above that so if you just choose 200 millimeters per hour yep you can pick up every suburb in Melbourne beautiful and most of Victoria yep and so your time is in the square area of a roof which most people can do by 200 millimeters per hour so that's giving you everything in millimeters per hour yes but you need leaders per second so you simply divide it by 3600 which is the magic number of seconds in an hour yeah oh well being go spits out you got your leaders per second yeah right and the moment you've got that keys to the kingdom mate exactly right this is this is this is what's very hard for a lot of people to calculate yeah yeah and then from that you can use a table you can plug in the downbuster system and because you're over sizing slightly you're going to cover yourself for any little yeah yeah anything you know if you're not getting the top of capings or whatever you're over sizing a little bit for that and you're a waste that's going to give you the starting sometimes it's really hard to get started but that's a really easy way to go but you'll find all that information in the in the quick guide and also in the other document on our website which is compliance for Victoria yeah so yeah that's a it's a really handy little formula that people love to get and that's why I love supporting your your stuff you know what I mean if like everywhere I go where are you I refer to your technical guides all the time I actually learned a lot of stuff from it yeah so I started getting into roof plumbing because as you know you go on a roof anywhere in Victoria guarantee defects yeah well the the V2 41% yeah for me I'm 100% it's 100 every time I go on a roof that's why I've gone on roofs you know I've roofs a hundred percent no one gets arrived every time I go on a roof it's non-compliant items all the time yeah no look I appreciate you coming and they give us or this insight and really appreciate your time I know you're very very busy oh I see you know um basically looks gonna have a lot of roof plumbers out there builders build the surveyors and I wanted to get this you know all this info out there it's a latest information Russell is there anything you want to let the audience know about your products that you know where they can buy it if somebody wants to buy some of your products whether they go for example well yeah if you just go on to the damn bus to website we've got a whole stack of licensees now yeah we start the spread up the east coast of Australia we've got licensees in Victoria you can go through Foxco in Tomas town that fold over in summary and up in New South Wales we've got some people who have come online there as well yeah so uh so you know well it's Queensland Queensland as well well yeah no man we're looking for a licensee in Queensland at the moment we would love some more interest from Queensland like you get absolutely flogs with rain in Queensland yeah and we need people to like get on board up there we get a lot of inquiries from there yeah wanting me to go and inspect there so yeah absolutely but yeah they've been a bit slow on the uptake the banana benders yeah so yeah like yeah we got some we got some great licensees who were doing wonderful things metal building and hardware in metal roofing and hardware in Sydney are doing great stuff as well all right thank you very much on the next episode guys we're going to have another expert as well um possibly maybe a lawyer as well we'll see how we go but until next time let's go