Our intelligent heroes: award-winning products that bear elegant witness to SCHELL’s ability to innovate

5-minute read

As a leading industry innovator, SCHELL regularly launches pioneering products such as the SCHELL SWS Water Management System and its SMART.SWS online add-on. Making legal compliance with drinking water installation standards as easy as 1-2-3. Many of our fittings can be networked with SCHELL SWS, including the XERIS E-T wash basin tap and the GRANDIS E kitchen tap – whose additional features have also secured them a number of awards from independent prize juries.

SCHELL SWS Water Management System: the intelligent industry favourite

The SCHELL SWS Water Management System provides centralised management for the building fittings it sets up as part of a wireless and/or wired network. The system can be used to program, automate and log stagnation flushes and thermal disinfections as well as water quantities, for example. The pioneering innovation of SCHELL SWS has won many prizes, including the Dutch VSK Award, the German iF DESIGN AWARD, the Plus X Award (in five categories), the German Innovation Award and the ICONIC AWARDS: Innovative Interior. Juries were impressed by the innovative technology and strong focus on practical utility as well as sustainable quality.

The VSK Award, from the largest installer trade fair in Netherlands, was presented to SCHELL SWS in the ‘Health and User Comfort’ category. Prize-winning features here included the integrated approach and the option for optimising the operation of sanitary installations in commercial buildings.

Presented by the prestigious iF Design institution, the iF DESIGN AWARD is an accolade that stands for design depth, usability and aesthetic appeal, as well as social responsibility.

SCHELL SWS won the Plus X Award innovation prize in no less than five categories: Innovation, High Quality, Design, User Comfort and Ecology. This not only confirms the solution’s pioneering technology and advanced features, but also its durable quality, functional design, intuitive operation and options for reducing energy use.

Complementing the prizes mentioned above, SCHELL SWS also won the Iconic Award: Innovative Interior, which honours quantum leaps in quality in all facets of interior design. Here, the jury noted that the Water Management System truly exploits the opportunities offered by digitalisation.

And that’s not all: SCHELL SWS was also presented with the German Innovation Award in Gold as an outstanding electronic solution for maintaining drinking water hygiene. The Award was presented to the Water Management System together with the SMART.SWS online service. Jury verdict: “Facility managers – especially those in the public sector – must comply with strict hygiene rules and regulations for drinking water installations. With the digital SCHELL Water Management System and its remote access tool, the entire building installation can be monitored and managed simply and easily – even from a remote location. The system also makes economical and resource-friendly operations even easier to achieve. Thanks to the modular design, the system can be configured individually, and is suitable for use in both new developments and existing buildings. Last but not least, it can be integrated into the central building control system or used standalone.”

The XERIS E-T wash basin tap, which can be networked with SCHELL SWS, is also a multi-award-winning product.

XERIS wash basin tap series: design and technology united as one

Contactless operation is becoming a firm favourite for taps, since it prevents contact infections and therefore improves hygiene while also protecting user health. One outstanding example, combining long-term reliability and optimum hygiene with high-quality design, is offered by the XERIS family of fittings, with their clean, rectilinear contours. Three sizes and three choices of outlet length as well as various options for actuation mechanisms and temperature regulation functions offer an ideal solution for any public or semi-public washroom facility.

The jewel in the crown of this family is the XERIS E-T, whose thermostat and contactless sensor actuation combines user convenience and anti-scalding protection with optimum hygiene and the highly economical use of water. A further level of safety is offered by the option for thermal disinfections. The thermostat in the tap also means that its temperature can be precisely regulated. Anti-scalding protection is maintained even if the cold water line fails: in this scenario, the hot water supply is shut off in less than a second. The tap also provides support for drinking water hygiene with automated stagnation flushes. When integrated into a SCHELL SWS network, the tap then also offers all of the benefits as described above. As a result, the XERIS E-T combines optimum hygiene, reliable user safety, maximum efficiency and first-class design. And the tap’s slimline design has impressed several juries, winning the German Design Award, the Iconic Award: Innovative Interior and the German Innovation Award as proof of this product’s effortlessly aesthetic appeal and strong user focus.

GRANDIS E: contactless hygiene in the kitchen

The electronic GRANDIS E kitchen tap offers further proof of the extraordinarily innovative teams working at SCHELL. This tap helps to maintain good drinking water quality in kitchens in public, semi-public and commercial buildings. In terms of operation, users also have a choice: while the single-lever mixer is a traditional, manual control, the infrared sensor also offers the convenience of contactless actuation at a predefined water temperature. The sensor range is restricted to 3 cm, so as to prevent accidental triggering – such as when placing a saucepan in the sink. With its integrated stagnation flush, the tap automatically ensures the regular exchange of water, even if the tap remains unused for a while. The angle of rotation for the pivoting outlet can be fixed to stay inside a single or double sink. This ensures that the outlet isn’t moved over the drainer and then left in place accidentally. As a result, water – including water from stagnation flushes – always lands in the sink, avoiding flooded floors.

For the exemplary combination of hygiene and user convenience represented by the GRANDIS E kitchen tap, SCHELL received the German Innovation Award from the German Design Council. Apart from unifying the needs of user and drinking water hygiene with comfort and design, the tap, when combined with the SCHELL SWS Water Management System, offers additional features for any facility manager: and it is these outstanding features that qualified the product to receive this prestigious award, which aims to make advanced innovations that improve our quality of life more visible.

SCHELL is always hard at work on pioneering new products, and the company’s status as a leading innovator is regularly confirmed and rewarded by the many prizes it receives. There are sure to be many more to look forward to and this blog will feature regular posts on our new products.

Check out this link for even more pioneering, elegant and contactless fittings that combine user convenience and hygiene while supporting drinking water quality.