As urban development and climate resilience demands grow, effective stormwater management has become a critical component of sustainable infrastructure design.
In partnership with Hydro International, Roadstone offers a comprehensive range of innovative stormwater management, attenuation and treatment solutions.
Our Hydro-Brake® Optimum vortex flow control and Hydro-Brake® Flood flow control solutions leverage more than 40 years of expertise to optimise attenuation design, manage flood risk and support effective Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS) strategies.
Hydro-Brake® Optimum
This precision-engineered vortex flow control device is designed to provide bespoke water quantity management for storm, surface, foul and combined drainage systems.
Capable of delivering site-specific flow control for discharge rates up to 550 l/s and head and storage requirements up to 4.0m, it enables engineers to optimise attenuation design while meeting strict hydraulic, storage and discharge requirements.
Hydro-Brake® Optimum helps protect against both upstream and downstream flooding as part of an effective SuDS strategy. Its self-activating operation, combined with a robust bespoke design featuring no moving parts and no power requirements, ensures reliable, low-maintenance performance throughout its lifecycle.
The device is particularly valuable where storage optimisation is a priority, helping to reduce attenuation volumes while maintaining precise flow control. This was demonstrated on the N5 Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge Road project, where bespoke Hydro-Brake® Optimum designs were developed for 11 attenuation ponds, enabling reductions in required storage volumes while also minimising the risk of blockage across the drainage network.
Hydro-Brake® Flood
For large-scale flood alleviation and flood storage applications, Hydro-Brake® Flood provides a robust, passive flow-control solution capable of managing flows of up to 11,500 l/s. Designed to help engineers and local authorities deliver effective flood risk management strategies, it enables the creation of site-specific flood alleviation schemes that address current challenges and also build in resilience to future climate change impacts.
Hydro-Brake® Flood delivers reliable flood mitigation through a no-power, low-maintenance bespoke design with no moving parts. Its ability to regulate large volumes of water at the watercourse level helps reduce downstream flood risk, protecting communities, businesses and critical infrastructure from costly flood damage.
A notable use case is Glasgow City Council's £53m White Cart Water Flood Prevention Scheme – the largest project of its kind in Scotland, designed to protect 1,750 properties in an area where water levels can rise by 6m after only 12 hours of rain.
Five Hydro-Brake® Flood devices, weighing over 60 tonnes in total, were installed to hold back the White Cart Water and its tributaries, allowing water to be released downstream at a controlled rate to prevent overspill of the city’s new flood defences.
The scheme has reduced downstream peak flows by up to 45% during major storm events, providing protection to a one-in-200-year flood standard.
Conclusion
As rainfall patterns become increasingly unpredictable and development pressures grow, engineers require drainage solutions that deliver both efficiency and resilience. Hydro-Brake® Optimum and Hydro-Brake® Flood provide proven, low-maintenance flow-control technologies that support effective SuDS design and long-term infrastructure performance.
Learn more about our Stormwater solutions here.