Older people and residents with chronic pre-existing conditions are among the main risk groups for Legionnaires' disease. At the same time, rooms often stand empty for weeks after a move-out, so the longest stagnation hits precisely the most vulnerable residents.
Aqvior tackles this proactively and keeps all rooms automatically flushed, before stagnation becomes a risk to residents.
Vulnerable residents
For these residents, Legionnaires' disease is far more dangerous. Several factors add up at the same time:
Vacancy after a move-out
After a move-out a room often stands empty for weeks until it is occupied again. In that time not a drop runs in that bathroom. Bringing rooms back into use after a long vacancy.
When the shower stops being used
Washed in bed, showered in the assisted bathroom, three weeks in hospital. The shower in their room then stays shut for months, even though the room is occupied.
Operator liability
Responsibility lies with the facility. If someone falls ill, the public health authority checks whether the obligations were documented.
100 CFU/100 ml
Action level
at least yearly
Testing interval
no extension
What is different for care homes
Legal basis: Annex 3 Part II, § 31 (1)–(3) and § 51 (1) TrinkwV.
Care facilities supply drinking water as part of a public activity and, as a rule, operate large-scale hot water systems with showers. This means the testing obligation under Section 31 TrinkwV applies in full.
How often Legionella testing is required →Age, diabetes, chronic lung disease or immunosuppressive therapy all raise the risk of a severe course sharply. In residents, Legionnaires' disease is also often spotted late, because its symptoms look like an ordinary pneumonia.
Symptoms and course of the illness →A shower stops running for all sorts of ordinary reasons:
None of that is unusual. All of it leaves the shower standing still.
The occupancy list tells you who lives in a room. It does not tell you when water last ran there. A full house can have dozens of showers standing still.
That leaves someone walking the corridors and opening the taps. Only: how long is long enough? You cannot see it at the tap. Whoever flushes too briefly never finds out. Whoever wants to be sure lets it run longer — and finishes the round with a feeling instead of a record.
Why the shower is the critical point →
In a care home, the danger hides in showers that are barely used, above all in rooms left empty after a resident moves out. Aqvior flushes them automatically. The flush no longer depends on someone remembering, and the entry is created at the moment of the flush, not at the end of the shift.
It is not the installation that is examined, but the records about it.
The sampling plan
Which outlets are sampled and why those — not only the water heater.
The results, and what came next
Not the lab report alone, but the measures and when they were done. Retention: ten years.
The temperatures
60 °C at the water heater, 55 °C in the circulation — and the evidence that hot water reaches the outlet.
The rarely used outlets
A flushing plan shows intent; only what is logged counts as evidence.
Detects which shower has had no water for 72 hours, without anyone having to think about it or enter a room. It watches the outlet, not the occupancy list.
After 72 hours it flushes on its own. It powers itself by turbine from the water flow, needs no power connection and no bathroom renovation.
Every flush lands in the dashboard with a timestamp, together with the temperature of the water that came out. At the next inspection the flush is already documented, without anyone having to fill it in afterwards.
What matters is not the size of the facility but the installation: a large-scale hot water system, showers that create aerosols and the supply of water as part of a commercial or public activity. If all three apply, there is a testing obligation.
They still have to be flushed regularly. In daily practice this is the thing most often overlooked: in a room that stands empty after a move-out, but just as much in an occupied room where the shower has not been used for months.
Responsibility lies with the operator of the drinking water installation, that is, the facility. If an illness is confirmed, the public health authority checks whether the operator obligations were met and documented.
No. It is mounted on the surface at the existing shower connection and takes under an hour. There is no construction noise and no tiles are damaged.
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The content of this page is for general information and does not replace legal, technical or health advice in individual cases. Information on Legionella and the associated health risks is general in nature and constitutes neither medical advice nor an assessment of a specific drinking water installation. For implementation in your facility, please review the specific situation with the responsible public health authority.
Aqvior flushes any shower where no water has run for 72 hours, whether the room is occupied or not, and documents every flush.
Protection for your residents, entirely without renovation.
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