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ACO Trench Drains: How to Spec a Complete System
A trench drain captures sheet flow across a line — a driveway, a loading dock, a plaza — and carries it to an outlet. ACO Drain is the modular, polymer-concrete standard for doing it cleanly.
Pick a channel family, a width, a grate to match your traffic, and the end caps and outlets to finish the run. Here's how the pieces fit.
Every ACO system starts with one decision: which channel family fits your site. There are three, and they map to the first step of the builder on this page.
Grates up to Load Class E
Built-in slope up to 130 ft
Parking lots, plazas, walkways, light industrial
EN 1433 Class F (~200,000 lb proof)
V-invert with built-in 0.5% slope
Roadways, docks, industrial yards, airports
Polymer, steel, or iron edges
Bottom-knockout vertical outlets
Decks, plazas, balconies, retrofits
How a Trench Drain Works
A trench drain is a long, narrow channel set flush with the surface. Water enters through the grate along its entire length, runs down the channel, and exits to a pipe or outfall — so you capture runoff across a line instead of hoping it finds a single spot drain. ACO channels can be installed with a built-in continuous slope up to 130 ft (40 m), which accelerates flow and cuts ponding. The bodies are polymer concrete — a dense, non-porous composite (around 14,000 psi) that shrugs off freeze-thaw cycles, de-icing salts, and chemicals, which is why it outlasts formed concrete and plywood forms in wet, dirty environments.
Load Class: Match the Grate to the Traffic
The grate — not just the channel — determines how much load the drain can take. ACO rates grates to the EN 1433 scale, which climbs from Class A (pedestrian and bike areas) through Class C (cars, light service vehicles) up to Class E–F for severe duty like industrial yards, loading docks, and airport aprons, where Class F handles proof loads around 200,000 lb. Match the class to your heaviest expected wheel load. Grates come in mesh, slotted, perforated, and ductile iron, with compliance options like heel-safe (≤ 0.25"), ADA, bicycle-safe, and anti-slip — the builder lets you filter by all of these so you only see grates that fit your channel.
Don't Mix Metals
Galvanized and stainless steel edge rails and grates are not compatible — pairing them causes galvanic corrosion and premature failure. Always match your grate material to the channel's edge rail. The system builder enforces this for you and will flag an incompatible combination before you add it to the cart.
Building a Complete System
A working drain is more than channel. Each run needs channels for length (sections are about 39.37" / 1 m — count them to cover the distance), a grate, two end caps, and an outlet, plus optional pieces like an inline catch basin or installation devices for setting the channels during the pour. Set your fall toward the outlet — aim for roughly 0.5–1% for self-cleansing flow; KlassikDrain offers pre-sloped and neutral channels, PowerDrain has a built-in 0.5% slope, and SlabDrain uses a flat invert so you grade the surrounding surface toward the channel and drop vertically through a bottom knockout. Match channel width to flow (4" suits most jobs; step up to 8" or 12" for high volume), and add about 10% for cuts and waste. Note that ACO orders carry a $750 minimum.
Quick Spec Checklist
- 1. Pick the family: general paving → KlassikDrain; heavy/industrial traffic → PowerDrain; shallow or depth-limited slab → SlabDrain
- 2. Size the width to flow — 4" for most jobs, 8"–12" for high volume
- 3. Match the grate load class to your heaviest traffic (pedestrian up to Class E–F)
- 4. Match grate material to the channel edge rail — never mix galvanized and stainless
- 5. Lay out runs with end caps and an outlet each, set ~0.5–1% slope, and add ~10% for cuts and waste
Examples to start from: ACO K100 KlassikDrain (4" general-purpose), ACO S100K PowerDrain (4" heavy-duty, Class F), and ACO SlabDrain (shallow, neutral-depth). Fiberglass FlowDrain and the paver-slot Brickslot are also available for special cases, all with free shipping.
Ready to build your parts list? Use the Trench Drain System Builder above — choose a system, width, runs, grate, and accessories, and it assembles a live list of channels, grates, end caps, and outlets you can add to the cart in one click.