In our cladding special, a bay apartment block is protected from the elements and a crèche wall is protected from flying toys – plus how to (safely) soften facades with planting
Cardiff Bay apartments weatherproofing
Architect Goddard Manton has used StoTherm Classic external wall insulation on its latest housing scheme in Cardiff Bay. The Sovereign Bay 60-apartment development rises up to seven storeys in height and has curved facades. The Sto render is fixed to lightweight metal stud and masonry, so both adhesive and mechanical fixings were used. For additional protection against weathering, the StoRend Flex Cote was applied after rasping. Flex Cote is a specialist anti-crack render system that consists of a levelling coat applied to the substrate, followed by a 3 mm coat of StoElasto, a cement-free, water-based and fibre-reinforced render. Sto Glass Fibre Mesh was then embedded into the StoElasto to which an acrylic, decorative finishing plaster called StoLit was sprayed.
Sto
www.sto.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 900

Extra-long cladding in production
Euroclad has opened a production line to enable it to manufacture 12 m-long composite cladding panels. The £4m manufacturing facility can produce Rockwool-cored panels up to 200 mm thick and is capable of producing up to 20,000 m2 a week.

Euroclad claims
that more specifiers will be forced to specify non-combustible steel and Rockwall panels as insurers continue to push up premiums for buildings constructed with sandwich panels such as polyurethane, polystyrene and polyisocyanurate.
Euroclad
www.euroclad.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 904

Anti-glare window film for car museum
Anglian Technical Window Films has supplied a film to prevent solar glare and heat gain at the Renault Racing Car Museum. Management at the Formula 1 Centre contacted installer Partition Graphics about the problems within the south facing building. It specified Anglian's reflective silver 20 solar film, which rejects 82% of visible glare and reduces solar heat by up to 75%.
Anglian Building Products
www.anglianbuildingproducts.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 905

Multicoloured panelling
Eternit Building Materials has added a new product, called Pelicolor, to its range of natural looking and multicoloured fibre cement rainscreen cladding panels. It comes in 17 standards colours and is available in two thicknesses – 8 and 12 mm – and six sheet sizes. Eternit claims that Pelicolor is low-maintenance, impact resistant and non-combustible. Pelicolor is also available in any approved RAL colour and features a glazed, granular finish. It can be surface-fixed or secured with concealed fittings.
Eternit Building Materials
www.eternit.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 906

Curved stone cladding for feng shui design
Haddonstone has supplied a cast stone cladding for the Serenity Spa at Seaham Hall Hotel in County Durham. The 50 mm Tecstone blocks were tied back to an inner leaf of blockwork on the spa. The project, which was built to feng shui principles, has no straight edges and all the rainscreen cladding walls are curved.
Haddonstone
www.haddonstone.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 907

Textile finishes for holiday homes
Arch Coatings has supplied their exterior Textile Finishes for a refurbished terrace of holiday homes at Croyde Bay Holiday Village, north Devon. The Textile Finishes have been applied to structured insulated panels supplied by Siptec. Siptec panel exterior
walls have been treated using a single coat
of Arch F2854 Stain Blocking Primer and finished in arch F1659 Texture Finish in Sandstone.
Arch Coatings
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 908

Lightweight mouldings for facades
External insulation and cladding specialist Dryvit UK has introduced a range of prefabricated architectural features such as cornices, pilasters and corbels. The lightweight mouldings consist of an expanded polystyrene core to which a non-cementitious acrylic basecoat is applied followed by a Dryvit finishing coat. It is based on Dryvit's Outsulation external insulation system. Bespoke features can be manufactured in any colour, texture and to any dimensions required according to Dryvit.
Dryvit UK
www.dryvit.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 909

Brise-soleil made of aerofoil fins
Levolux has supplied a bespoke facade for two buildings at an out-of-town business park at Quinta da Fonte near Lisbon. Levolux had to provide sunshading to the south facing facades, one of which is curved. The
solution involved 600 mm aerofoil fins with spans between 7.5 m and 9 m incorporated in a brise soleil, which projects horizontally from the building by 7.5 m. Steel columns support the brise-soleil 12 m above the ground. The fins were made in three parts that clip together. These are supported between rectangular hollow sections of steel which are fitted back to the cladding of glass and local stone.
Levolux
www.levolux.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 910

Insulated render for refurbishment
The facades of seven apartment blocks in the Lakeside high-rise estate in Sunderland have been refurbished using preformed insulation panels. PermaRock supplied insulated render to the external walls, which was covered with a combination of through-coloured silicone and acrylic textured renders and Decoline tiles. PermaRock says that the new insulated render has improved the thermal performance of the towers.
Decoline
www.decoline.co.uk
PermaRock
www.permarock.com
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 911

Vibrant red panels for nursery school
Poppy Red panels from CEP Claddings have been used to clad a new nursery school at Birchwood Park, Warrington. A total of 500 type 6 Steni Colour cladding panels covering a surface area of 350 m2 were fabricated and supplied by CEP. The Poppy Red panels were fixed to the steel studding forming part of
the prefabricated structure, which was manufactured by Britspace Modular Buildings. CEP says that the Steni Colour panels come with a colour stability guarantee of 15 years and claims the panels have a life expectancy of 30 years.
CEP Group
www.cepgroup.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 912

Automatic blind and window control
Somfy has launched a system that automatically controls interior blinds and windows to control the light, temperature and ventilation of a building. The Animeo IB+ system can drive eight separate zones around a building, operating blinds and opening windows according to light levels, interior and exterior temperatures and the strength and direction of the wind. The system is controlled by software hosted on a local or remote PC and can be linked to air-conditioning and heating systems. The weather information is transmitted to the system via sensors outside the building or inside a switch cupboard.
Somfy
www.somfy.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 913

Stainless steel interlocking cladding
Carlton Building Services has provided all the cladding on a residential conversion project in Chester. Carlton used its stainless steel interlocking cladding system to help transform the 1970s office block. The system is a secret fix facade system and was installed on either
18 mm wbp plywood or a timber grid with a separating breathable membrane. Lead sheet was installed to the main gables form the second to the fifth floors. Carlton also supplied the stainless steel panel inserts within the curtain walling and Carlton installed lead panels to the penthouses at roof level. The company also manufactured stainless steel columns running vertically and horizontally.
Carlton
www.carltonroof.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 915

Guide for wall and ceiling panel system
Kingspan Insulated Panels has launched a Design and Construction guide for its KS1200 CS wall and ceiling panel system. Kingspan says the guide is designed to support best practice specification and installation of the system with particular regard to fire performance. There is a range of construction details and project decision flowchart and cutaway illustrations demonstrate how the KS1200 CS solution can be best applied. There is also information regarding the KS1200 CS's effective biological, fire and acoustic performance characteristics, as well as product data for dimensions and weight, load span tables, heat transmission rates, available core thicknesses and U-values.
Kingspan
www.kingspanpanels.com
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 916

Guide to using joint sealants
Sealant specialist Tremco has issued a 16-page guide to its range of joint sealants. Construction Sealants: A Guide to their Specification and Use features diagrams and text that explains the correct way to design and seal joints at critical building component interfaces. The topics covered include joints in cladding and curtain walling, around window perimeters and in floors and roofs. Expansion and compression joints are also covered as are fire resistant joints and gap filling. Charts also show how to calculate the movement of a variety of materials under a range of different temperature and moisture levels.
Tremco
www.tremco.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 917

Lightweight non-combustible panel
Metecno has launched FireMet, a polyisocyanurate panel, which the company
says is lightweight and has the non-combustible attributes of a mineral wool insulated product. Metecno was until recently known as Composite Panels. The Scottish-based company says the name has been changed to reflect the close ties to its holding company Metecno International Group.
Metecno
www.metecno.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 918

What’s the spec?

King’s Cross Community Learning Centre
The cladding specified at the King’s Cross Community Learning Centre in London is rather like a soft-centred sweet. The building’s hard exterior is made up of fibre-cement panels and curtain walling, whereas a crèche on the interior of the centre has walls of flexible, yielding polycarbonate cladding. Although the polycarbonate looks delicate, architect Gollifer Langston says it is robust. Originally it was going to be used to clad the exterior but the feeling was that a more solid looking material should be used to deter would-be vandals. Gollifer Langston says it was attracted to the fibre-cement panel because it combines a stone-like appearance with a clean, sharp finish. The panels are coloured all the way through, which ensures that the fibre-cement won’t fade over time, and that any scratches and pockmarks will be hard to detect. To meet target U-values, three skins of polycarbonate were used to make up the crèche wall. The transparent polycarbonate allows children to peer outside the structure and is flexible enough to sustain direct hits from toys and wayward infants. Privacy was provided for the toilet block of the stand-alone timber structure by Rockshield insulated render. The cement fibre panels used on the main building were insulated using Celotex semi-rigid insulation. Project team
Client King’s Cross Community Learning Centre

Architect: Gollifer Langston
Insulated render: Rockshield by Rockwool www.rockwool.co.uk
Curtain walling: Comar www.comar-alu.co.uk
Main contractor: Durkan Pudelek Timber soffit
Neil Burke Joinery
workshop@ndjlimited.freeserve.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 901

Fibre-cement panels
Eternit
www.eternit.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 902

Polycarbonate cladding
Polyplastics
www.polyplastics.co.uk
www.building.co.uk/enquiries 903

Tips for planting facades

Ivy draped over pubs and homes may be easy on the eye but the roots of the climbing plant are likely to be destroying the fabric of the buildings. Architects that include “greening” in their designs need to be careful what plants they specify. Ivies, for example, can grow into the brick joints and eventually crack the building facade. A guide from wire cable manufacturer Jakob offers detailed information on specifying climbing plants and offers the following advice for architects thinking of mixing nature and mortar:
  • To avoid damage to the facade, Jakob suggests using vines (twining plants), leaf-stem climbers, leaf climbers and scrambling plants in conjunction with its Inox Line of steel ropes and fixings. Adhesive sucker climbers and root climbers should be avoided. Greening specialists should be consulted when the plants are chosen.
  • Growing conditions should be as near as possible to those found in the climbers’ natural habitat. Generally good supplies of water and nutrients are important.
  • To determine the dimensions of the training system consider the following: the vigour, size and climbing pattern of the desired climber; the architecture – for example balcony or high-rise buildings – and the aesthetics of the plant. The dimensions to be determined are the height and width of the climber supports, distances from wall, wire rope spacing for vines, lattice size and wire rope or rod diameters.
  • Consider the overall load of the plant and training system before specifying materials. The load will be made up of the plant weight, wind load on plant surface, weight of dew and rain, weight of snow and weight of training structure.
  • An engineer should also consider whether the plants are deciduous or evergreen, the orientation of the site, and the most appropriate rope or rod grid aperture for the chosen plant.
  • The weight of the plants will increase over time and it may be necessary to retention the wire ropes or add anchors and reinforcement elements. For more information and a copy of the guide contact sales@mma.gb.com 0845-1300135. Jakob
    www.jakob.ch

    • Integrated curtain walling system

    Reynaers Aluminium has introduced a curtain walling system called CW86. The structural or cassette curtain walling is designed to create facades from one integrated system range. The company has also launched its Architect’s Catalogue for 2003. The catalogue offers information on Reynaers range of windows, doors, curtain walling, sliding systems and atriums. It is available in paper and CD-ROM form and can be downloaded from the Reynaers website. Reynaers
    www.reynaers.com
    www.building.co.uk/enquiries 914

    Liverpool arts wrapped in zinc sheets

    CGL Cometec has supplied the zinc tiles for the new Foundation for Art and Creative Technology building in Liverpool. The zinc sheet cladding wraps around the face of the building. A total of 2823 tiles of 41 slightly different shapes are held on vertical rails to create a rainscreen. Working like traditional roof tiles, they allow air to circulate behind them while shedding water in the event of rain. A computer model of the facade produced by architect Austin-Smith:Lord was used by CGL Cometec to cut each tile. The cladding tiles were cut and folded by an automated machine working directly from computer drawings. CGL Cometec
    www.cglcometec.demon.co.uk
    www.building.co.uk/enquiries 919

    Tiles