Flood barrier launched by Kilcolgan man

IT is just over one year since large areas of South Galway were submerged after heavy rain led to extensive flooding. For many, it rendered their land useless. Others were forced to leave their homes which were badly damaged or destroyed. One Kilcolgan man, moved by the predicament of a neighbour, attempted to find an engineering solution to the problem. Last weekend, he launched a new flood barrier for domestic and commercial use.
Ian Conboy set up Adaco Manufacturing Ltd in 1991 with the aim of developing and manufacturing a range of gas appliances called Falcon Fires.
“Our timing was great because as we developed our knowledge and skills in the ’90s so we were in a good position to profit from the building boom of the ‘noughties’. Alas, Christmas 2008 saw us sell our last product into housing estates. Prior to the collapse of the building industry, 85% of our product went into new housing estates,” he recalled.
“On the last day of December, it was like things were normal but in January, you could feel it falling all around you. There was nothing. No phonecalls. It really hit hard. Up to that, we were happy enough that we were going to exist. From my perspective, in January 2009, the whole building industry went into free fall. 80 to 90% of all gas fires we made were going into housing estates. Then in 2009 we didn’t put one gas fire into a housing estate for a builder and to this day I don’t, think we have done any. The whole building-of-housing-estates industry, we were tied into that. We are still manufacturing gas fires and selling them but we are selling more individual bespoke units to specialists and architects who would deal in gas fires around the country. The spare capacity we were left with after the fall in 2009 meant we had to do something new and one of the things we came up with was a range of solid-fuel stoves which we developed,” Ian added.
Although occupied with research and development last year, staff numbers still dropped. In 2008, the company had four full-time employees and a number of subcontractors. By this year, it had just one, in addition to Ian.
Last November proved pivotal to the company’s survival. Large areas of South and East Galway were badly flooded.
“The idea of a flood barrier system came to me after a neighbour’s house, here in South Galway, flooded. I had been watching as the water level grew higher and came closer to the house. Then one day, I called over and met him and his wife in the kitchen. It is split level. The lower level was covered with water but they were in the upper level carrying on as normal. There was devastation all around them. Even the sandbags didn’t stop the ingress of water. It was terrible but it was like a eureka moment. I thought there has to be a better way to stop water coming into your house. I have a background in other areas of engineering and I said it is just an engineering challenge and we will rise to it and see what we can do,” Ian remembers.
“Every spare minute and euro from then until now has gone into developing this. We now have 10 standard models to suit most door sizes. We can even extend it to make a continuous barrier by using a pillar support at intervals. This may be deployed around commercial premises, car parks, riverbanks,” he commented.
Ian experimented with a few different designs before finally settling on the type he launched last weekend at the Galway Ideal Homes Exhibition.
“You mount a bracket on either side of the door opening. Then you put a series of horizontal barriers into it. You pull down a lever and it pulls the pieces together. A lot of thought went into it,” he explains. 
“We kept it light so that it would be easy for anyone to install and made them in sections so that people could store them in the attic during the summer,” he concluded.