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Kitchens & Washrooms ‘World-class’ facilities enable health & wellbeing People in the West Midlands wanting to improve their health and fitness can benefit from new, state-ofthe-art facilities that deliver optimum accessibility in all aspects. University of Birmingham’s £55m sports club, Sport & Fitness, has, from the outset, been developed as a world-class venue for everyone, including students, staff, alumni, and the community, from elite athletes to people with disabilities, injuries or other specific access requirements. “Substantial effort has been made to ensure all facilities are as accessible as possible,” explained Simon Walton Project Manager for Interserve Construction, builder of University of Birmingham Sport & Fitness. “The swimming pool has a hoist and moveable steps, the gym includes 25 pieces of inclusive equipment, even the toilet facilities should accommodate most people’s requirements!” www.clos-o-mat.com Vectair contribute for Children in Need Vectaire Ltd had pleasure (and fun) in contributing a dozen EL1003 for a DIY SOS Children in Need project in Swansea. The challenge was to build (in eleven days) a new Centre and supported housing for young people in care and leaving care. Vectaire was delighted to donate both the required Elegance 1003 fans and their expertise with on the spot advice as to the best ways and means of installation. EL1003 is a quiet-running, extremely economical, PCDB listed, 3 speed centrifugal fan designed for installation in walls, ceilings or windows in all domestic wet rooms. It has an energy saving EC motor which runs continuously at a pre-selectable choice of 2 lower speeds - depending on whether it is installed in bathroom or kitchen - and allows the user to boost fan capacity when required. www.vectaire.co.uk University of Kent focusses on accessibility The University of Kent is maintaining a strong focus on accessibility within its residential student accommodation, with the completion of four newly refurbished fully accessible bathrooms in its Kemsdale Court and Stock Court buildings. Products from Pressalit Care offer not just the ability to easily raise and lower the height of individual bathroom elements, but the wallmounted Plus track system also allows for horizontal movement to suit individual needs. The ergonomic design of the Matrix Curve hand basin has a shallow bowl which allows for wheelchair access underneath, whilst allowing easy reach of the tap. Also chosen for the new bathrooms is the Pressalit Care shower seat, with independently height adjustable back- and armrests; it is electrically height adjustable by 500mm with a wired hand control. With foldable seat and arm rests, space in the bathrooms is maximised whilst maintaining space for manoeuvrability. www.pressalit.com Best on energy for exterior and interior applications Rinnai’s Infinity range of A-rated continuous flow gas fired water heaters which includes models specifically designed for domestic/light commercial use guarantees the highest efficiencies and lowest running costs at consistent temperatures 24/7 compared with any method of hot water delivery. The Rinnai Infinity range of continuous flow – sometimes referred to as ‘tankless’ - water heating units are being specified more and more often for domestic properties, cafes, pubs, restaurants, offices, shops, hairdressers, commercial units, caravan parks and leisure facilities as installers and end users become aware of their energy saving benefits. The reason for the increase in uptake is that continuous flow heater systems are proven to be more energy efficient than storage systems and as such are increasingly becoming the experts’ preferred method of hot water provision. The word is out that the Rinnai units easily cater for projects that need high volumes of water at intermittent times of day delivered at accurate temperatures to ensure user comfort and safety. They are also easy to operate and simple to install and maintain. Rinnai's Infinity multipoint 16i water heater, for example, eliminates the problem of sudden changes in water temperature, resulting in cold showers or scalding hot baths – the water temperature you set is the water temperature you get. www.rinnaiuk.com 26 Winter 2018 <strong>4152</strong>
In my opinion The challenge of the conversion The Conservative Government has an ambitious programme to open over 600 new Free Schools by 2020 and has established the LocatED property company, to secure the sites across the UK. Nicolas Maari, Head of Architecture at Pellings, thinks that whilst this is laudable, the quality of children’s education should not be compromised in the rush to provide for increased pupil numbers. The dilemma is that in built up urban areas there aren’t the large tracts of land available to build the schools that tick all the quality criteria. Multi Academy School Trusts are therefore sometimes being requested to use existing buildings – old office blocks, factories or hospitals, perhaps. The main issue with converting these buildings to schools is on space standards and the clustering of year groups, which wherever possible shouldn’t be compromised for the sake of the children’s education/teaching. So, for example, if there is a school with a two-form entry in one year then ideally one wants to group those year groups as well as ancillary accommodation. This often proves difficult within a building conversion. Having previously worked on projects where schools were accommodated in multi-storey office buildings, issues we came up against were fitting the ancillary space to service the year groups. In that instance we had to consider splitting the year groups as well as staggering playtimes and lunches. This in turn would affect the operation of the school. In addition, it is difficult to achieve the same efficiencies in spaces and operation that are possible in building a new school from scratch. Adapting buildings previously used as residential accommodation may result in schools being single aspect with corridors taking up space on external walls. This typically would be mitigated when developing a new build school in order to obtain efficiencies in the useable area. of the age of the building and its low ceilings. The minimum requirement should be at least 2.7 metres clear to get the light to the back of the classroom and meet Building Bulletin regulations. This was not possible in this building, and as such this building which was earmarked for conversion to a school needed to be demolished, which significantly affected the programme of delivering this free school. This requirement is typically very difficult to achieve when converting a residential building into a school. This, however, is more achievable in office building conversions. Nicolas Maari Dealing with buildings with totally different types of structure can be a challenge. What if there are structural columns in the middle of classrooms? To remove these to achieve clear classroom/studio and hall spaces could be very costly to alter, and perhaps life cycle costs can be just as expensive as building a new school. Managing buildings and spaces are more complex with existing buildings. In an urban area where the only option is to have a rooftop playground then there is the logistics issue of staggering play-time and supervising it. Controversially, The Education Skills Funding Authority has moved away from the hard and fast ethos of providing play spaces on-site. It used to be very strict but is now more flexible in a priority classification, and where unavoidable is prepared to allow provision of off-site play areas. Many educationalists would argue that in terms of well-being it is important for city children to have external play space. However, because of the number of pupil places required this seems to no longer be a priority, although arguably this is to the detriment of the wellbeing of the pupils. Flexibility is now the name of the game and politically the pressure is on for the existing administration to deliver the school places. In the days when Local Education Authorities were setting minimum standards it was clear what had to be delivered. With academies it is less clear and it is down to the professional advisors to work with the academy providers to recognise the importance of those standards. www.pellings.co.uk The previous use of the building needs to be considered from the outset before embarking on converting it to a school building. We have found, for example, that invariably, the acoustics don’t meet the needs of the school use, and with constrained window sizes the natural lighting in an existing building is often not adequate for school use. This was the case with an old manor building which I was previously involved in. The floor to ceiling heights were constrained because Winter 2018 <strong>4152</strong> 27
Page 1: Winter 2O18 issue 4152 School build
Page 4 and 5: Editor’s Article Go west… Tyron
Page 6 and 7: Article A new era for electric heat
Page 8 and 9: Heating, Ventilation & Energy Use s
Page 10 and 11: Heating, Ventilation & Energy White
Page 12 and 13: Heating, Ventilation & Energy Syste
Page 14 and 15: Modular Buildings Learning environm
Page 16 and 17: Editor’s Article School report ha
Page 18 and 19: Interior Design & Fit Out On the bu
Page 20 and 21: Interior Design & Fit Out UCL choos
Page 22 and 23: Interior Design & Fit Out Enhance s
Page 24 and 25: Product News GEZE UK gets top marks
Page 28 and 29: Case Study Streets ahead, & weeks a
Page 30 and 31: Exterior Building webermineral TF r
Page 32: Light Oak elements commercial vinyl

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