Whitehall Manufacturing® is pleased to announce a new partnership with W.D. Manor Mechanical Contractors, Inc., the inventor of the industry’s only prefabricated modular dialysis supply wall box.
The all-inclusive, prefabricated W.D. Manor Dialysis Box (WDMDB) is designed with patient safety and the needs of healthcare facility owners, caregivers, designers, and construction teams top of mind.
Typically, a healthcare specialist uses a dialysis machine that requires cold, potable water at the unit itself. The process also entails that the waste water connection is adequate to receive no less than 1.6 GPM.
That dialysis machine connects to a dialysis service cabinet, commonly called a dialysis box, containing a hose bib and drain connection. What you don’t see is all the additional distribution piping in the ceiling, connecting the wall box to a closet or utility room where the backflow preventer and trap primer—required by code—are located.
Additionally, the dialysis service cabinet requires a trap primer to keep the p-trap sealed. Typically, these are installed in a separate service cabinet, requiring additional wall space.
The WDMDB offers several significant advantages over the traditional system:
- It eliminates the need for excess dedicated cold water distribution piping.
- It eliminates the cost and space requirements for additional wall space intended for remote backflow preventers, trap primers, and supplementary access doors.
- It consolidates all the required components into one user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and completely functional cabinet.
- It increases patients’ safety by protecting the water source at the point of connection.
Vice President of Whitehall Manufacturing Kristin Kahle said, “Whitehall has been making dialysis boxes for decades, but we sat up and took notice when W.D. Manor released their all-inclusive units. Their boxes were the best dialysis units on the market.” Kahle added, “They are better because they were designed by mechanical contractors with a deep knowledge of their market.”
Pete DeWitt, vice president of purchasing for W.D. Manor, said the box came about during a project for one of the largest hospital systems in the country, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.
That hospital adopted a template approach, which provided fully integrated care for patients with critical needs. One result of this change was the placement of dialysis wall boxes in every patient room, allowing greater flexibility. Patients can receive treatment right in their room as opposed to being moved to a dialysis bay.
As a contractor, W.D. Manor understands that the number one variable—and a contractor’s biggest risk when estimating a job—is labor. The WDMDB eliminates all the work required for the distribution piping, along with the hangers and supports, traveling back to that utility closet.
“The hangers can be 40 to 60 percent of your labor. The WDMDB is a plug and play unit. You take it out of the box, mount the unit to the framing, you make one connection on the supply and one connection on the drain, and you walk away,” said DeWitt.
The WDMDB is also a space saver. Hospitals have a lot going on in the ceilings as it is. Having to run extra copper distribution piping for every dialysis box takes up a foot or two of valuable space. Eliminating that piping reduces congestion in the cramped ceiling and eliminates unnecessary BIM coordination.
But even more importantly, having the backflow preventer in every dialysis box eliminates the long dead leg of water sitting in the pipe, potentially hundreds of feet back to the utility closet. Certain jurisdictions allow the supply boxes to be linked downstream of one backflow preventer, but then you run the risk of cross-contamination.
The WDMDB has a point-of-use backflow preventer that eliminates such a risk. “When you protect the source, you protect the patient,” said DeWitt.
For a contractor, the choice between the WDMDB and a traditional box is an obvious one. W.D. Manor’s dialysis box saves on labor and on scheduling. But to be able to make that choice, specifiers have to know the WDMDB exists.
“We’re so excited to be partnering with Whitehall. We’re a contractor who became a manufacturer by circumstance because we had such a great product that customers and contractors wanted. But we didn’t have a sales or marketing team, so engineers and contractors had to find us,” said DeWitt.
The partnership with Whitehall gives W.D. Manor the sales and marketing expertise they need to get their dialysis box into more hands, as well as the precision manufacturing power to ensure the boxes are built to last and provide exceptional performance.
DeWitt explained, “We need to get the message out to engineers because our product has to be incorporated into the design. This is a specification and design-driven dialysis box. Yes, the unit itself is more expensive than traditional connection boxes, but our unit is completely different and has a better design. It’s an entire system in a box—piping, valves, backflow, trap primer—making it a more cost-effective choice.”
DeWitt also points out the advantages Whitehall brings with their relationships to the owners and the healthcare design community. In the end, it all comes down to patient safety and infection prevention. WDMDB is the best dialysis box on the market, and you cannot put a price on patient safety.