Archive for category: Building News

Orbit Housing’s Fordham House in Stratford-upon-Avon aims to raise the bar for rented accommodation. Although initially a social housing provider, Orbit now refers to itself as a “developing housing association”, and Fordham House is designed for private rental by key workers in the town.

The 82-apartment block provides enhanced protection against noise, a superior maintenance and repair strategy and addition facilities such as secure internal bike storage rooms. Much of the budget for these above-and-beyond features has come from the specification of Modus PVC-U windows from Eurocell in place of the aluminium frames originally specified.

The result was a significant reduction in costs, with no compromise on building design and performance. Despite the building being located on the busiest road in Stratford, residents have been satisfied with the noise suppression provided. Confirmation of the Fordham House project quality came with major award wins in the 2019 Inside Housing Development Awards – Best Build for Rent Development and RICS Residential Property of the year (West Midlands).

Fordham House was also awarded Residential Property of the Year at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) awards, West Midlands in 2019.

Constructed from dense concrete blocks with hollowcore flooring, the three- and four-storey building is clad in a mixture of curtain walling and green wall – sections of planted walls which will be automatically fed and irrigated. The Modus windows, supplied and installed by Unique Window Systems, are tilt-and-turn so that they can be cleaned internally, avoiding the potential hazard and traffic issues of accessing them from the elevations by the two busy roads.

With many tenants expected to come from expanding local hospitals, acoustic improvements were high on the menu of potential value enhancing features. Orbit has beefed up the acoustic barriers between floors with a layer of insulation and screed with suspended ceilings added to the deep hollow concrete slab. It has also added fitted blinds within the reveals of the windows to provide an additional noise cushion for shift workers who need to sleep during the day.

BBA-certified to function satisfactorily for more than 35 years, the Modus range achieves a U-value of 1.2 W/m² using 4/20/4 mm sealed double-glazed units. This effective thermal performance is due to the 75mm six-chamber profile system used in the Modus system that also enables the range to achieve a U-value of 0.7 by installing triple-glazed units.

This led to Modus becoming one of the very first systems to achieve the BFRC Window Energy Rating (WER) of A++. This is only awarded to windows with an energy index value equal to or greater than +20; and Modus A++ designs include casement, reversible and tilt and turn.

Additional budget gained from savings on the window costs has also gone into upgrading the flooring material. Ceramic wood-effect flooring has replaced lino to provide a longer life and hence lower maintenance costs and down-time for Orbit.

A re-think of the building’s layout produced space for a substantial ‘spares room’ which will house items such as cookers and kitchen units. With all the apartments kitted out identically, this will enable faster repairs and reduce the time required to spruce up homes between tenancies.

To find out how Eurocell can assist in delivering private rental schemes that are lower cost, sustainable and desirable to private tenants, call our customer services team on 0800 988 7300 or visit www.Eurocell.co.uk

LED lighting applications and installations are set to be transformed with the launch of an innovative, brand new downlight from Knightsbridge – one of the UK’s leading brands of wiring devices, accessories and lighting.

SpektroLED breaks through the limitations of traditional LED downlights, offering unrivalled choice in versatility, performance, and style in one unique package, doing away with the need to specify multiple LED lamp types. It is also designed and manufactured in such a way that installation is quick and easy.

The new downlight can be configured to offer 40 variants from the one product thanks to its selectable wattages and CCTs and choices of bezel. Depending on the required illumination either 5W (up to 465 lumens) or 8W (up to 795 lumens) can be pre-selected via a switch on the rear of the lamp body. Once chosen, there are four CCTs available – 2700K, 3000K, 4000K and 6000K – the desired colour temperature selected by a sliding switch also on the rear of the lamp body.

Further customisation is then possible through the various bezel options that allow the lamp to complement or contrast with a room’s décor or colourways. The bezels come in a choice of stylish finishes from popular white and matt black to chrome, polished chrome and brass.

These permutations of wattage, colour temperature and bezel choice make SpektroLED a genuine 40-in-1 solution.

Installation is both quick and simple. Each unit, which has a low-profile design, features cleverly engineered first and second fix power connectors with loop in/loop out terminals that can be terminated and hidden away while other works are finished. Then the downlight can be simply plugged in to complete the installation after decoration, avoiding the issue of paint-damaged bezels! The connectors also allow the luminaire to be removed for maintenance or even re-programming by simply unplugging them.

Furthermore, the downlight is fire rated for solid timber, web joist and I-joist installation and is also IC rated* so retaining the efficiency of any mineral wool insulation in the ceiling void. And with an IP65 rating from below, it is suitable for use in bathrooms, wet rooms or other rooms where moisture is prevalent.

 Once installed, SpektroLED will give 50,000 hours of rated LED life and can be used with leading and trailing-edge dimmers should the need arise, though compatibility should be verified beforehand. A five-year warranty guarantees peace of mind.

With the launch of SpektroLED, Knightsbridge is providing greater freedoms for user-determined lighting projects and making life for the installer so much simpler.

*check the product datasheet and instructions for further details

Click here to visit the website

The future carbon economy will present major challenges and opportunities for M & E (Mechanical and Electrical) companies over the next 10 years with the need to deliver innovative design solutions for new and existing buildings, according to Julian McCamphill, Operations Director of Dowds Group.

There is already considerable pressure for change, but while most building manufacturers and suppliers are looking at delivering better energy saving performance across product ranges, the onus will be more and more on M&E contractors and designers to be more proactive in terms of reducing carbon footprints to meet Government targets.

As these targets alter and become more complex, this in turn will mean the need for new initiatives to provide even greater investment to attract highly trained staff to join the industry, especially graduates who will need to see construction as a more attractive career option.

For companies such as Dowds Group, the challenge already exists to deliver increasingly complex projects involving BIM, new technologies and much more. These are already being incorporated into all new contracts – a typical example is the planned major refurbishment of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in south London operated by the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust.

The project is worth around £30 million. More than half of that total will be spent on delivering the M&E.

Work has already started for Dowds to accurately design and agree cost on every aspect of the project prior to contractors going into the hospital at beginning of 2022, with the contract expected to be finished the following year.

“Attention to detail, health and safety matched by an emphasis on delivering quality at all times is important for every type of contract,” said Julian Camphill, “and this particularly applies to work in hospitals and in our opinion will increasingly become more challenging.”

“That attention to detail relates to everything we do – right down to knowing that when an operative flicks a switch, everyone is totally aware of what is on the end of that and every other circuit. It could be a patient on life support, power to a critical operating theatre – it is that important.”

“Equally, we have to be aware that we are not only designing and installing infrastructure that meets today’s needs, it also has to be fit for purpose for the next 20 years or more and be capable of delivering Government carbon targets and changing patient needs.”

Dowds, working from their head office in Belfast for more than 40 years, has an enviable reputation for delivering quality healthcare projects in Northern Ireland. This expertise has been transferred to London where the company is now regarded as one of the fastest growing of its kind across the capital and the rest of the UK.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital which was built in the 1950s and later modernised in the 1990s under a PFI agreement is in urgent need of refurbishment and modernisation to bring the building up to modern standards.

Dowds, who will be working closely with the NHS Trust to ensure minimum disruption to staff and patients throughout the refurbishment, will be responsible for upgrading all of the electrical infrastructure. They will further upgrade the facilities for medical gas supplies such as oxygen, the climate control and all the other M&E areas across the site.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital is the latest in a growing number of healthcare success stories for Dowds, which include just about every major hospital in Northern Ireland together with scheme at Addenbrookes, Merseyside, Newcastle, Reading and many other parts of the country.

With NHS Trusts probably under more pressure than ever before due to Covid and expanding waiting lists, the focus is now firmly on the M&E sector to deliver 21^st Century facilities – that’s the challenge for companies like Dowds – and they are up to it.

www.dowdsgroup.com

By John Alexander, Managing Director of Aquobex,

leading global specialists in designing, developing and

implementing flood protection solutions for homes and businesses. 

While a most welcomed one, the Government’s announcement for ‘record’ investment of £860m into more than 1000 flood alleviation schemes is an ambitious one to deliver in this current fiscal year.

There are still millions of homes around the UK that need to be protected, so this latest committed spending programme will bring greater certainty and continuity to households affected and to the flood protection industries supplying these schemes, to help the country avoid the current pitfalls that occur due to the current ‘start stop’ approach to flood mitigation.

Most welcome, though, are the tighter restrictions on planning permission for new builds because we need to reduce the number of homes at risk rather than increase them.

The enthusiasm from the flood re-insurance scheme, Flood Re, for a build back better proposition for the existing 5.2m properties liable to flooding is also positive and we await the detail in their remit from this announcement.

Rather than current insurance policies with like-for-like replacements after an event, Flood Re insurance policy changes will improve a property by allowing insurers to pay additional amounts for property resilience measures, such as Floodguard Slot In flood barriers which are versatile to fit most widths or flexible flood doors, like Hydroguard, so recovering from a flood is much quicker and cheaper.

The other big issue though, which is unlikely to be a part of the Government’s recent flood defence spending plan, is how we remedy surface water flooding, which is increasingly affecting communities. We saw this in parts of the country, most recently London, as its remedies are in improved drainage, SUDS and with, some imagination, natural floodplain management (NFM) in suburbia.

Surface water flooding is occurring more often these days due to the ever-increasing amount of impermeable surfaces and the high intensity rainfall events we’re experiencing through climate change. It is also harder to predict, plan for and respond to yet 1.4m of affected properties suffer from surface water flooding.

The Government’s recent report published on surface water management action is of equal importance as it outlines how local authorities and the Environment Agency will work closer in this area with new mapping by 2022 and a more joined up approach.

Surface water flooding is a growing challenge with climate change bringing more frequent heavy storms, new developments increasing the need for drainage, and our ageing sewerage infrastructure which is costly to maintain and upgrade. Surface water management needs coordinated action by all those with responsibilities for managing land, rivers and drainage systems, including national and local government, water companies, landowners and businesses.

However, how this is going to be funded is the million-pound question. 

For more information on flood defence actions, contact Aquobex on 01923 518 582.

aquobex.com