Kingspan Kooltherm K103 Floorboard has been installed as part of a new, three-storey block at The Heath School – helping to bring existing specialisms together under one roof.
The building, designed by Ryder, was constructed to accommodate up to 1,050 pupils and 200 sixth form students. By replacing the old structure with state-of-the-art, climate-controlled classrooms and improved facilities, the school could aim to raise their OFSTED rating to ‘Truly Exceptional’. 1,720 m2 of Kingspan Kooltherm K103 Floorboard was specified for the ground floor with a further 605 m2 of Kingspan Thermapitch TP10 installed within the roof construction to help the school towards its target of a BREEAM rating ‘Very Good’.
Gareth Callen, partner at Ryder, discussed the specification: “It was essential that building materials were tried and tested in addition to having excellent thermal performance and the Kingspan Insulation products met these requirements. The Kingspan Insulation products helped us to minimise the building’s energy consumption.”
The school was planned using passive design features that could be successfully implemented within budget. Kingspan Kooltherm K103 Floorboard has a thermal conductivity of just 0.018 W/m·K across all thicknesses, making it the most thermally efficient insulation products commonly used. This allowed room heights to be maximised without compromising the fabric performance of the building. Both Kingspan Insulation products installed on the building have been assigned a Green Guide Rating of A+, contributing towards the award of credits within the BREEAM assessments.
The Kingspan insulation boards were delivered to site ready to install and were also said to be ‘easy to handle’, which meant little disruption to the parts of the school still operating during construction. The lightweight fibre-free core is non-deleterious, and the boards can be cut to size with a sharp knife or fine-toothed saw, making it quick to fit. This allowed the contractors to mitigate some of the concerns of residents who were worried about access constraints and traffic build-ups in an already busy area.
All Kingspan Kooltherm, Therma and KoolDuct insulation products and cavity closers manufactured at Kingspan Insulation’s facilities in Pembridge and Selby are certified to BES 6001 (Framework Standard for the Responsible Sourcing of Construction Products) ‘Excellent’. The products are manufactured with a blowing agent that has zero Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP) and low Global Warming Potential (GWP).
