Agency Requirements

LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), an internationally recognized green building certification system, provides third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving environmental quality across crucial metrics.

The sales team at EJ routinely assists customers in qualifying for LEED® credits on new projects. A majority of EJ products help our clients qualify for LEED credits under the Materials and Resource category or Recycled Materials section within the ratings guide. Alternatively, credits may be earned through the Sustainable Sites category and the Storm Water Design section.

The Fallacy of the Generic Grate

Even with all these variations, some customers still believe that a grate is a grate. In fact, Seger finds this to be the biggest misunderstanding he encounters: A grate is only a piece of iron with holes. "Someone will say that he or she simply needs something to stop water pooling," Seger says. "Just give me a standard grate."

"There is, however, no such thing as a standard grate," Seger explains. "A customer cannot be successful by simply picking a grate off the shelf. Instead, we ask our customers these basic questions:"

How is the site used?
How much water will fall on the site?
How fast do you want the water to drain?
What is the geography of the site where you are installing the grate?

"Properly addressing drainage requirements demands an engineering exercise for each drainage grate installed," Seger emphasizes. "The need drives the design. A classic beehive grate—about the size of a basketball—drains high-debris, non-traffic areas such as a backyard well. Draining a baseball field, however, has very different considerations than draining a residential street."

Designing Water Management Plans

Water management plans for a site are some of the most complicated designs. You must ensure that there will be no loss of value and that the water will be collected from the ground and directed into a pipe as soon as possible. As soon as water builds up, you have the risk of erosion or hydroplaning.

In fact, drainage grate design has evolved to adapt to an urban environment with more constructed areas—such as footpaths, roadways, and parking lots, which are all impervious surfaces restricting effective drainage of rainwater.

In response, modern drainage grates capture water more efficiently. This means larger openings, inlet configurations to catch moving water by vanes or waves, more efficient designs to reduce the amount of iron needed to maintain the same efficiency, and greater capacity to withstand heavy loading from airplanes, heavy machinery, or trucks. As an example, EJ makes extra heavy duty airport rated grates that can support loads up to 200,000 pounds.

Innovation to Meet Customer Needs

We complement our extensive in-house knowledge with third-party research and input from industry experts. We also ensure that our products perform optimally through finite element analysis, in-house tests on materials, and load tests on product prototypes.

This commitment to meeting customer requirements extends through our unique Product Lines:

• Access Covers, Grates, and Frames
• Streetscapes and Urban Designs
• Access Hatches
• Fabricated Metals