David Peart, general manager of Energy Partners, remembers hearing about the day a relative of someone he knows collapsing against a toilet door from the inside, and it was too hard to push open the door from the outside. “Occupational therapists tell me this happens around 500 times a week in Australia from heart attacks or strokes,” Peart says.
Galvanised by this incident, David Ashards, national manager of Doorsmart International, went on to develop a door that opens both ways. The Smart Door System, which has an international patent, is set to be manufactured in Newcastle and will be available across Australia, with doors to be supplied by Energy Partners.
“You can move through the two-way opening door from either direction,” he says. As well as saving people trapped behind doors, it helps reduce the risk of injury to residents, giving peace of mind for families with elderly relatives.
The door’s sturdy, pivot hinges have a jacking pin on the bottom hinge and are designed to support heavy solid core doors. The hinges are virtually concealed when the door is closed and nylon brushes mean they barely need lubricating. The two-way door latch is compatible with many existing, conventional door locks and handles, including push button privacy locks for emergency access, as are the striker and striker plate.
The timber door jambs suit door sizes 820 mm, 770 mm, 720 mm and 620 mm with minimum door openings of 923 mm, 885 mm, 835 mm and 735 mm, all by 2,100 mm.
“You only need the door jambs, hinges and striker and striker plate if you are fitting the Smart Door System to an existing door,” says Peart. The cost of doing so is similar to a conventional door and one person can fit or remove a door from a frame in a few minutes.
Another quickly installed and adaptable product is the SHCU100 Careport portable free-standing shower/toilet system. Made in England, “there is nothing similar on the Australian market,” says Stewart Wallace of Australian supplier Aurora Sanicare. “What makes the product so unique is the way it can be taken into any building, through any doorway, because we dismantle and re-assemble it in each situation.”
It can be used with or without the toilet, with the shower only option accommodating most shower stools or chairs or with fold-down shower seats. Especially useful for short stays, the Careport is mostly hired out to people modifying their existing bathrooms to suit special requirements, for palliative care where funding might be a problem, for isolating anyone with an infectious disease or in rented homes when the bathroom cannot be altered. It can be installed in many different rooms and on several different floor surfaces, including carpet.
The surface of the fibreglass base is textured and slip-resistant. There is a safety thermostatic mixing valve, height adjustable shower rose, which can also be handheld, and an optional hot water system unit, if there is none on site. Aurora handles all the Careport’s plumbing and uses its own licensed plumbers. “The waste is pumped into any existing wastepipe drain nearby and the water supply is fed from the closest hot and cold taps,” Wallace says.
The Careport is 900 mm wide, with a clear opening of 760 mm. It is 2,015 mm high, 970 mm deep and has a 200 mm access ramp for easier access for carers. All units are available in white.
InterfaceFLOR has been manufacturing products for health and aged care environments since 1988 when it acquired manufacturer Heuga. “The demanding aspects of these environments require a balance of a number of important product attributes that sometimes are in conflict,” Robinson says. “For example, a soft floor covering can minimise the severity of injuries sustained through slips, trips and falls. However, hard floor coverings offer the least resistance to wheeled traffic.
“Rolling resistance is a measure of the force or effort required to move a wheeled object across a particular floor finish. The softer the floor surface, the greater the force required to push, but importantly, the larger the wheel diameter the easier it is to push. InterfaceFLOR has tested the majority of equipment used in both health and aged care facilities for both our products and other floor covering options. We have taken into account the many varying and sometimes conflicting criteria and have developed products that provide a balanced approach for the welfare of patients, staff and the environment.”
Building on the interchangeable nature of modular carpet, InterfaceFLOR’s release of new product Cubic continues to show the flexibility of its i2 Collection. “i2 products are unique in that they are not dye-lot dependant,” Matt Robinson says, InterfaceFLOR’s business development manager — education and healthcare and an accredited Green Star professional. “Instead, i2 modules always blend with modules of the same colour, regardless of when they are bought and installed, making i2 the only truly mergeable floor in the industry.”
“The random nature of the design and installation” of Cubic makes it easier to maintain because, as the company’s literature states, “damaged tiles can be easily replaced without affecting the visual integrity of the installation”.
The squared format of modular carpet already delivers dimensional stability. When combined with the product’s impermeable backing, which keeps spills on the surface to ease cleaning, it helps to prevent frayed edges, stretching, shrinking, curling and bubbling. Along with staining, these are the main reasons for premature replacement of traditional sheet carpets, Robinson says.
All InterfaceFLOR products contain the patented anti-microbial preservative, Intersept, which protects the carpet module against the growth of mould, says Robinson. All InterfaceFLOR carpet sold in Australia is also certified climate neutral Cool Carpet.
Modular carpet is inherently less wasteful than broadloom carpet, with modular flooring installing with 3.9 per cent waste versus up to 13.1 per cent waste for broadloom, InterfaceFLOR says. i2 non-directional modular products further reduce waste to only 1.4 per cent.
With a growing focus on sustainability in the building sector, the Green Star Healthcare rating tool is currently in pilot phase and addresses the entire building, from base building to interior fitout. Sector-specific credits include providing places of respite, indoor or outdoor, one for patients and visitors and another for staff.
Robinson says: “At InterfaceFLOR we are seeing a trend whereby the humanising element is becoming a stronger driver of design and product selection. A number of our clients are making real gains in de-institutionalising the look and feel of facilities.”
