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A standing seam VMZINC roof in a natural finish has been used in Scott Brownrigg’s design of the new £16 million home of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery. The 5.4 acre site at Napier Lines Woolwich is the biggest zinc project in Europe over the past year and achieved a BREEAM 'Excellent' rating. The zinc complements timber cladding on buildings which provide stabling and full support facilities for 170 horses as well as a museum, veterinary clinic, saddlers' and tailors' workshops and the largest, most modern blacksmith's forge in the British Army. Zinc was chosen for its sustainability in a design which is ‘carbon minus’ and will generate surplus energy by running entirely on bio-fuel derived from horse manure and bedding. The zinc roof incorporates solar chimneys which provide natural stack ventilation to the stables together with rainwater harvesting and S.U.D.S systems.

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Despite the fact that in the heating industry in the UK, renewables are the sexy topic of the moment, that fact hides some perhaps worrying truths that are overlooked. Firstly that the number of renewable systems being installed, whilst on the rise, is still a tiny proportion of the heating system activity taking place and secondly, that very few installers out there understand the breadth of options available and can genuinely integrate different renewable and energy saving systems to offer their customers a system that does exactly what it says on the tin – reduces energy use, reduces carbon emissions and reduces heating bills. Too many systems are simply whacking in a heat pump, or popping in a wood burning stove – without the benefit of system design.

One that can, and does, very successfully is Dave Clarke & Son in Hinckley, in the heart of Leicestershire.

A thriving business now, employing 25 people and offering probably the widest range of renewable and energy saving options of any comparably sized firm in the country, the company you find behind the interesting faÇade of its ex-chapel, ex-Co-op premises in the centre of Hinckley is a far cry from the business that started life in Dave and Anne Clarke’s tiny back bedroom in 1982!

Having attended two job interviews and not fancying either very much Dave decided to go it alone and do his own thing, with the not inconsiderable support of wife Anne and the snazzy transport offered by their bright red mini van. The business grew on the back of recommendation and a growing reputation for quality and in 1984 the company took on its first apprentice. In 1985 the second followed and in 1987, five years into the success story, it took on three qualified tradesmen and began to use sub-contractors. The company was on the move!

Not surprisingly it outgrew the small bedroom and had to move into a larger one in the house. But that was a temporary move and they were soon looking for ‘proper premises’ – and found an ex-chapel that had been a Co-op but which had been empty for two years. It was owned by an Austrian company and a rapid exchange of views and an offer saw the property pass into their ownership. The Clarkes had their own business home, although it needed significant work to turn it into their new HQ!

This was thirteen years ago and since then, two new companies have been formed under the same umbrella – Greenheat Geothermal Limited and David Clarke and Son Electrical Contractors Ltd – two new stand-alone companies that saw the business become a one stop shop for most activities they were offering to customers in the region.

The company celebrates its 30th birthday in August 2012 and now boasts 25 employees in total. Son Dale and daughter Kerry are now directors of the company so there’s a planned succession in place to guarantee the company’s long term viability. Dale was Plumbing Student of the Year at Leicester College and participated in SkillBuild 2004 – Plumbing at Stourbridge College, defeating the UK Apprentice of the Year on route to the final.

The firm has its first ever female apprentice currently working her way through her qualifications – Emily Friswell joined the company in 2011 and is now in her second year plumbing and heating course at Stephenson College in Coalville. She’s one of four apprentices currently working with the firm, another of which – James Toulouse – is building a very high level of skill in the area of geothermals having recently picked up the Building & Social Housing Foundation Award for 2011 which saw him win £1000 worth of renewables training.

A visit to the Clarke’s base in Hinckley is an impressive eye opener for anyone interested in the area of renewables and energy efficiency – and that’s not just the bacon butties dished up by son Dale – if we mention that some manufacturers use the test rigs at the premises themselves because they are actually more impressive than their own – you begin to get the picture. Dave Clarke has reached a stage in his career where he doesn’t necessarily believe everything it says on the paperwork that comes with equipment he wants to include in a system he’s designing. He likes to test the equipment himself to the level that he feels is required before he includes the piece of kit – whatever it may be – in a system design that he is devising for a customer: “I like to test the equipment myself so I can genuinely recommend a piece of kit in a design, with confidence that it will deliver what I say it will deliver – not necessarily what the paperwork says it will deliver,” he says with something of a twinkle in his eye.

“When a customer comes along and says to me ‘This is what I want’ I tell them, you can have what you want of course, but I’m here to show you – and give you – the options available to you – then you can make an informed choice.” He is a firm believer in having working kit available in his showroom to let customers see the kit he’s recommending, in action before they make a final decision.

Let’s take an example of kit he’s now recommending to his customers. Wilo pumps. For many years he used a major competitor’s pumps in every installation. Then he was encouraged to take his team to visit Wilo’s headquarters in Burton-upon-Trent for a training day. He resisted for a while, but eventually was persuaded to make the time investment. After a day of hands on training, getting to like the feel and to appreciate the energy efficiency benefits of using Wilo pumps, the team sat down for a discussion. They were all mightily impressed, not just with the products they had seen and worked with, but by the level of technical support they had had and which was on offer from Gary Wheatley, Wilo’s technical manager at Burton. They had a very sticky issue with a pump on a project they were working on and decided to put Gary to the test. He was invited out to the site to offer his advice. An hour later, they were all sold! And from that day to this every pump installed by the company has been a Wilo pump. A quick look around the showroom will confirm their conviction that Wilo pumps are the ones for them – with several of the new Wilo Yonos-PICO circulators driving systems.

David Clarke & Son Plumbing & Heating is taking major strides as it offers cutting edge integration of renewable heating options for its customers locally and farther afield. The reputation of the company has well and truly spread, and they’ve been undertaking some very complex heating system installations across the UK in recent months as a result of recommendations from happy satisfied customers: “30 years down the road, we have a business of which we’re proud and a future that looks rosey,” says Dave Clarke as he beams at you from his bright green sofas in the showroom. “And it’s on the back of quality people, using quality products in quality designs. It all needs a bit of thought. You can’t throw this kit together and hope. It’s about understanding each individual product and understanding how they can complement each other and come together to produce the most energy efficient heating system you can buy.”

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As part of its Work Within the Community project, the senior sales team from Mira Showers, the UK’s leading manufacturer of showers and shower accessories, are working on a pioneering initiative to enable the disadvantaged to get onto the housing ladder.

Called Habitat for Humanity, the charity enables would-be homeowners to use their labour – or ‘sweat equity’ as it is called – to replace the capital that would be required otherwise so that they can work 500 hours to provide the deposit for a home. The site in Liverpool is in Granby-Toxteth, a racially diverse area with more than 54 nationalities.

Mira is now a partner with Habitat for Humanity, so as well as the senior sales team working on site and performing basic laboring, the company will also supply products that are installed in the homes.

Paul Hollingworth, Sales Director, Mira Showers, commented on the makeover: “Such projects are very much in keeping with our principles of Corporate Social Responsibility; We judge our business not only by the normal business standards, but also by the difference we make to the world in which we live. We believe that partnering initiatives such as Habitat for Humanity brings sustained, collective value to our employees, our customers and society at large.”

Habitat for Humanity is a self-help charity founded by Millard Fuller, an American self-made millionaire, who believed that the poor didn’t need charity so much as capital.

In 1973 Millard took the housing partnership concept to Zaire in Africa. The model worked just as well there and more than 100 homes were built in the first project. So began a programme of expansion, and now more than 3000 communities in more than 90 countries (including Great Britain and Northern Ireland) have managed to solve their own local housing issues through the Habitat for Humanity model of self-help.

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FAKRO FTT U6 triple-glazed pine roof windows have been used in the design of the Passivhaus Artist’s Studio in Canterbury. As the UK’s first light industrial Passivhaus project the building obtained a preliminary airtightness test result of 0.39 air changes per hour, comfortably inside the Passivhaus limit of 0.6 and UK Building Regulations of just 10. The BBA certified FTT U6 has an overall U-value of 0.81 W/M2K, giving it the best performance available in a standard triple-glazed roof window. Its enhanced sealing system and internal laminated pane gives the glazing unit a thermal performance of 0.5 W/m²K.

Passivhaus Designer Paul Mallion of Conker Conservation commented, “I selected the roof lights as they have a good Ug value and insulated flashings, wool thermal break, airtight and windproof collar and remote electrical operation. Being one of the UK’s first certified Passivhaus buildings we also opted for a higher glazing specification”.

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Georg Fischer (GF), one of the world’s leading providers of plastic piping solutions to the construction and public sectors, is celebrating the completion of its work at the new Portsmouth Queen Alexandra Hospital together with the new pathology centre, having been chosen to provide water piping systems to the project. Services included not only providing product but also technical expertise, installation and training capabilities in the use of ABS pipe fittings and valves, prefabricated PE sections and ELGEF electrofusion systems.

ABS had been specified for the chilled water pipework element of the project, while GF was also able to offer PE solutions for the condensed water element of the programme. In order to meet the needs of the contract, GF undertook significant training of partner contractor Haydon Mechanical & Electrical’s staff in order to bring all the pipefitters up to speed in terms of the plastic piping installation techniques required, including butt fusion and solvent cement jointing.

With a high concentration of Glycol in the water, GF had to show that its ABS systems were able to perform technically in a demanding environment, as well as working from an ease of installation perspective. In addition, large diameter PE systems were needed that could withstand the harsh 45°C environment of the condensing water system – and again, GF was felt to offer the perfect technical solution for the build programme.

Challenges for the programme included extremely limited site access and GF worked with logistics contractors to co-ordinate a ‘just in time’ delivery mechanism for pipework. The units were also cut to three metre lengths in order to overcome limited access to some of the floors.

Ian Wright, senior project manager at Haydon Mechanical & Electrical, noted: “We chose to work alongside GF because of its technical expertise and commitment to work alongside and train our team in terms of working with large diameter polyethylene systems. Between ourselves and Georg Fischer, we have formed an extremely effective partnership that delivered the piping systems on time and on budget…”

Georg Fischer’s marketing manager, Simon Alder, commented: “It’s been a privilege to work alongside Haydon and main contractor Carillion plc on the PFI project at Queen Alexandra Hospital. In a challenging environment, we were able to bring innovative, total plastic piping building solutions to the project in what was a great example of the capability of Georg Fischer’s piping systems and its commitment to client service.”

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The customer is always right and, in many cases the customer prefers analogue controls.

So Theben has added a surface- mounting controller with traditional clock and rotary controls to its range of OpenTherm compatible devices. At its heart, if course, is a digital microprocessor.

The unit regulates temperature by room sensing or weather compensation. As well as room heating the RAMSES 786 OT will control hot water temperature. It is suitable for radiators and underfloor heating No mains power required, data is transferred and power drawn via an extra low voltage OpenTherm bus via an OpenTherm compatible boiler.

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The BBA and RDL have joined forces to form a joint venture called Constructive Details Limited. Under this initiative the two companies aim to work together with the industry to provide solutions on the increasingly complicated, technical and often confusing issue of linear thermal bridging.

Linear thermal bridging (described by a psi-value) can now account for up to 30 % of heat loss in a building and with the need to provide more energy efficient buildings on the road to zero carbon, the industry is looking for ways to obtain reliable, favourable and realistic psi-values.

One of the aims by CDL is to facilitate accurate psi-value calculations and we are now pleased to announce the launch of the first Constructive Details handbook of masonry detail junctions developed for the Aircrete Products Association. The Handbook is available electronically via a dedicated “Resources” page on the CDL website and can be downloaded free of charge.

The junctions are for partial fill external wall (16 details) and full fill party wall (5 details). Another handbook of the same junctions but for a fully filled external wall cavity is already under assessment.

The main benefits of using Constructive Details are:

• The details have been optimised to provide significantly lower psi-values than those in the ACD’s, leading to a 60 % improvement of the overall y value
• The handbooks contain a complete set of junctions needed to construct a dwelling allowing optimum thermal bridging performance to be achieved. They match the ones currently featured in Appendix K of SAP 2009 with clear and simple drawings, easy to follow examples for achieving the desired psi-values, checklists for use on site and guidance on the amount of insulation needed
• They are future proofed – providing the E and P numbers for each junction and providing a range of U values for the plain elements to meet current and future performance all the way up to Passivhaus standards
• They use generic products allowing supply chain flexibility and consequent best costs

As Greg Cooper, Chief Executive of the BBA says “The BBA is delighted to have worked in partnership with RDL to produce this handbook. It will undoubtedly enable aircrete block manufacturers to pass on accurate information to their customers and provide house builders with a complete list of thermal details to use in their design and build process”. Dave Baker, Chief Executive of RDL adds “The CDL handbook follows the principles of the Robust Details Part E scheme handbook and should prove to be an invaluable tool for designers and new home builders alike.”

So go ahead and register to be the first to view the CDL Handbook and use our Twitter account @ConstructiveDtl to give us feedback!

For more information on this press release please contact enquiries@constructivedetails.co.uk

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Gone are the days when your oil tank simply STORED oil. iTank’s intelligent oil monitoring technology means that now your oil tank can actually work for you in saving you money and reducing your energy consumption!

The brand new ‘iTank’ range from Harlequin Plastics not only monitors your oil levels, but actually ANALYSES both oil usage and spend per day/week/ month and year. iTank’s intelligent technology comes in the form of the market leading ‘i-Track’ Intelligent Oil Monitoring System – the most ACCURATE way to analyse oil usage on the market, with oil levels being calculated over 200 times per day. Furthermore, spend is calculated on actual daily usage i.e. Sunday is compared with Monday.

Worried about running out of oil? iTank’s accurate monitoring technology means that you can see exactly how many days’ fuel you have left in your tank at any given time. Furthermore – iTank is the most secure tank on the market, with iTank Pro models incorporating a Harlequin internal alarm lock (sounds 100db alarm when tampered with), an external Spinsecure tank lock (secures manhole lid) AND i-Track’s remote alarm system, which alerts the householder in the event of an unexpected fuel loss or theft. This same alarm feature is also a useful means of being alerted when you are about to run out of oil.

So… there’s no need to get caught out this winter and even better, you can use iTank to plan your oil purchases wisely according to price trends! Finally, iTank isn’t just an intelligent tank, it’s also a greener tank (and we don’t mean the colour!). By providing you with information on your CO2 emissions, iTank can help you take your first steps in ‘going green’. Still not convinced? You can access all of the information listed from anywhere in your home, thanks to iTank’s portable i-Track receiver unit, which is battery powered and can therefore be placed anywhere in your home and can be moved from room to room without any impact on your readings!

Now… there’s nothing left to do except sit back, relax and let your iTank take care of the fuel worries!

For more information on iTank or to request a brochure, contact Harlequin Plastics at info@harlequinplastics.co.uk or call +44 (0) 28 9261 1077

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Crabtree has developed a new range of energy saving, card-operated switches in response to a number of new required features as defined by its end user customers. The switches complement the company’s popular range of Capital Moulded, Capital Metal Plate and its prestige Platinum Low Profile accessories.

As with other card switches, the device controls energy consumption in hotels and apartments by ensuring that electrical devices are not left on when rooms are unoccupied.  It goes further than many other competitor’s switches however by providing a natural angled entry for the card and illuminating the slot itself, for much easier location and operation, especially at night in a darkened hotel room or corridor. Insertion of the key card turns the neon locator off in line with its energy saving credentials.

Crabtree’s card switch is operated by a door entry key card up to 86mm x 54mm x 1mm, and controls the power supply to a room via a suitably rated contactor. The switch requires a mounting box of 25mm minimum depth.

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Swish Building Products has retained the green standard BES6001 across its roofline range, with a ‘very good’ rating, delivering instant point wins to house builders under the Code for Sustainable Homes.

In retaining its ‘very good’ rating across its PVC fascia, soffit, cladding and window board ranges, Swish is able to offer developers access to a product offer that gives them maximum points under the Code (tier level 1).

This to date is a unique achievement for a PVC roofline company and means that Swish’s low maintenance range offers the same points as FSC timber under Mat2 and Mat3 of the Code.

Greg Wilde, Swish Building Products, said: “At face value it may not seem much but BES6001 is a hugely important accreditation – it means developers, social housing providers and merchants can demonstrate responsibility and sustainability in the supply chain.

“On the back of this they are able to secure an instant quick win, gaining additional points under the Code for Sustainable Homes.”

Including an assessment of organisational governance, supply chain management and social and environmental impact, the new standard was written into the Code for Sustainable Homes in late 2010. Swish Building Products became one of a handful of building product manufacturers to secure the accreditation last year.

BES6001 ‘pulls’ together a number of other standards to demonstrate a commitment to responsible sourcing of materials. Swish Building Products only secured the new standard after previously securing the quality management standard ISO9001, the environmental management standard ISO14001 and occupational health and safety OHSAS18001.

Swish also had to demonstrate that it had policies and management systems in place to make sure that the raw materials it purchases come from responsibly and sustainably managed sources.

“House builders, and particularly those working in the social sector, can’t afford to lose contracts or miss out on new business, because their sustainability claims don’t stand up to scrutiny. BES6001 and chain of custody forms a critical part in making sure reputations remain intact but moreover that the construction industry and its suppliers move forward together towards a more sustainable future.”

The Swish certification can also be viewed on the Green Book Live website www.greenbooklive.com .

For more information on Swish’s full range of rainwater, roofline and cladding products visit www.swishbp.co.uk or call 01827 317 200.

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