View the Addagrip entry on BPindex
The winner of Addagrip’s ‘Dream Patio’ Instagram competition is revealed!
Addagrip were delighted to present the winner with a full patio makeover.
Take a look at the pics to reveal a stunning before & after!
JAKOB WEBNET FRAMES
View the MMA Architectural Systems entry on BPindex
Visit the MMA Architectural Systems website
High Quality, High Performance Solutions for a Range of Applications
Supplied and Supported exclusively by MMA Architectural Systems in the UK, the Jakob range of made-to-measure Webnet Frames has been developed for both indoor and outdoor use. Recognised worldwide for their precision engineering and innovative designs, Jakob Webnet Frames offer trusted, high-performance solutions for a range of demanding applications.
Installed in a wide variety of applications, from balustrades to helicopter landing pads and from partitioning to bridge safety, Webnet Frames are manufactured from high quality 316 stainless steel.
Combined with the Jakob Webnet stainless steel wire mesh infill, our Inviss range of frames incorporates Webnet into the structure of the frame to provide a clean and stylish solution which delivers long-life performance and low maintenance. A feature of these frames is that there are no wires around the edge, and all of the Webnet end-connections are ‘hidden’ inside the frame.
Also available are the original Jakob’s Classic Frames, which offer a more traditional aesthetic while maintaining the same high standards of quality and performance.
The complete Jakob range is manufactured from the company’s plant in Switzerland, which consistently achieves the highest standards of quality and sustainability.
Wide Range of Options and Finishes
All the Jakob Webnet Frames are tailored to meet the needs of each individual application, with the bespoke units being available in a wide range of frame, finishing and fitment options, including:
- Choice of round tube or square hollow sections
- Option of pre-drilling or welded with lugs, eyes and bosses
- Easy-fit fittings and clamps for fast installation
- May be powder-coated in any RAL colour
- Range of rope diameters and mesh apertures to meet load-bearing requirements
Weather resistant and highly durable, the frames are certified, and collision tested to EN12600:2002
Suitable for Indoor and Outdoor Applications
Proven in applications throughout the world, Jakob stainless steel frames are suitable for a wide range of indoor and outdoor applications, including:
- Balustrading
- Guarding
- Partitioning
- Skylight opening safety – fall prevention
- Heli-pad surround
- Glass protection
- Bridge safety
- Observation platform safety
Jakob Rope Systems is supplied exclusively in the UK by MMA Architectural Systems, providing quality solutions for Green Walls, Car Park Safety, Animal Enclosures and Bridge Safety. We are also the sole UK agent for the proven Geggus Entrance Matting System.
Technical Support
Our comprehensive support package includes full technical assistance to help architects, developers, contractors and installers select the correct products to meet their design and performance needs.
Our experienced and dedicated team provides a complete design, installation and maintenance service, allowing us to work with you at every stage of the project, if required.
Whether you are looking for a specific solution or need advice on the most appropriate system for your project, our team will be happy to support you through every stage of the process, from initial design through to installation and maintenance.
Please contact us to discuss your requirements.
Phone: +44 01761 419 427
E-Mail: sales@mma-architectural.co.uk
Web: www.jakob.co.uk
Mendip Stoves Loxton 3 Cooktop: Award-Winning Warmth and Versatility for 2024
View the Eurostove entry on BPindex
The Mendip Stoves Loxton 3 Cooktop is a standout in home heating and cooking, winning the prestigious title of Best Stove at the Build It Awards 2024. This compact wood-burning stove combines style, practicality, and innovation, making it an ideal choice for contemporary homes seeking efficiency and versatility.
Designed for modern living, the Loxton 3 Cooktop is perfect for smaller spaces, offering an impressive heat output while maintaining clean-burning performance. Its eco- friendly design meets stringent emission standards, ensuring warmth that is as kind to the environment as it is to your home. The addition of the durable cooktop elevates this stove beyond a traditional heater, allowing you to prepare meals or keep your coffee warm, making it a cosy centrepiece for any kitchen or living area.
Crafted with precision and diligence, the Loxton 3 Cooktop boasts a robust steel body and a large ceramic glass window, giving you a stunning view of the flames. Its advanced airways system keeps the glass clean, enhancing your experience of the fire’s natural glow.
This award-winning stove epitomizes Mendip Stoves’ commitment to quality, combining timeless design with innovative functionality. Whether you are looking for efficient heating or an additional cooking option, the Loxton 3 Cooktop is a perfect choice to enhance your home’s warmth and character. It is no wonder it captured the attention of the Build It Awards judges in 2024!
Benefits of a Rainscreen Facade
View the EQUITONE entry on BPindex
Our engaging and informative RIBA accredited CPD seminar covers the design, principles and benefits of specifying rainscreen facades.
During your CPD you will learn:
- What rainscreen cladding is
- Materials
- Fire classification and wind loadings
- Fixing methods & facade support options
- Façade benefits to the build including thermal properties
- Typical details e.g. panel layout and joints
- Examples of build
Attendees of the presentation will be sent a CPD RIBA Certificate. Complete the form here Request a CPD – EQUITONE
Please note this CPD seminar is open to UK practices only.
BLÜCHER are pleased to announce a new modular drainage channel to the market.
View the BLÜCHER entry on BPindex
BLÜCHER® LINEA is a high-quality stainless steel drainage solution that combines sleek design with robust functionality. It is designed to fit seamlessly into various architectural settings, offering both a contemporary look and durable performance. The stainless steel construction provides longevity and resistance to corrosion, making it the ideal outdoor use solution.
Engineered for precision, the system features modular components for quick, easy assembly and integration with existing drainage setups. Its lightweight structure facilitates simple installation, reducing time and labour costs.
BLÜCHER® LINEA will be ideally suited for application areas such as stadiums, airports, shopping enters and train stations.
ALL THE ADVANTAGES – IDEAL FOR OUTDOOR APPLICATIONS:
- High-quality stainless steel
- Modular components that can be quickly assembled
- Straightforward installation process
- Corrosion resistant
- Robust functionality
- Combining modern aesthetics & durable efficiency
- Lightweight material enables simple installation reducing time & labor costs
- Long-lasting performance
Daniel Marshall, Country Manager for BLÜCHER UK says ‘’At BLÜCHER, we know our customers value style and functionality. That is why the BLÜCHER® LINEA drainage solution stands out, blending modern design with durable efficiency. It’s ideal for external applications and its modular design simplifies installation, saving time and costs’’.
For more information on how BLÜCHER can support your project or business with stainless steel drainage solutions, visit our website or call today on 01937 838000.
Five Tips for Effective Blue Roof Design
View the ACO Building Drainage entry on BPindex
Visit the ACO Building Drainage website
Stormwater management and flooding pose significant risks in urban settings. Blue roofs have evolved as an innovative technique for storing rainwater, decreasing flood hazards and supporting sustainable development. However, misconceptions about blue roofs can cause design issues. Kevin Bohea, Manging Director of ACO Building Drainage, shares five recommendations for de-risking blue roof projects.
1. Understand what a blue roof really is
It should be noted that blue roofs are not actually roof waterproofing systems: they are separate attenuation systems intended to temporarily hold rainwater and slow its discharge, reducing urban flood hazards. Recognising this distinction is critical for good design and integration with modern construction methods.
2. Separate blue and traditional roofs
A popular misconception is that blue and conventional roofs are the same system. Blue roofs are intended to hold and keep water, whereas standard roofs aim for quick water removal. Separating these systems prevents design compromises and assures compliance with British Standards and Building Regulations. ACO’s blue roof system keeps water away from the roof and off of the waterproofing layer except in extreme cases, meaning the risk of unwanted water ingress is kept to an absolute minimum.
3. Address key design considerations early
It’s important to address the number, placement, and size of roof outlets, roof fall gradient, kind of roof construction, and time period for water retention of a roof system at the design stage. These elements are required for both the roofing and blue roof attenuation systems to function properly.4. Mitigate risks with independent systems
Considering blue roofs and traditional roofs as independent systems means any risks associated with design compromises can be mitigated early on. This approach ensures sustainable drainage and prepares for worst-case weather scenarios, enhancing overall building resilience.
5. Selecting the Right Attenuation System
The biggest challenge is knowing which attenuation system to select as part of the project. It is recommended that a blue roof attenuation system, that keeps form and function distinct, should be adopted. Systems like ACO’s RoofBloxx, for example, operate independently of the roof waterproofing and drainage system, ensuring compliance with building standards. They also ensure efficient water management during extreme weather events. Given how frequent extreme weather conditions appear to be happening across the UK, this couldn’t be more important.
What’s next?
Architects and designers have a crucial role to play in the implementation of blue roofs. From ensuring they are designed to meet the regulations, to determining the full environmental benefits when assessing any potential future impacts, architects will be pivotal in integrating these systems into infrastructure.
By following these tips, and working closely with the manufacturers themselves, architects and engineers can effectively de-risk blue roof projects and contribute to sustainable urban development.
To learn more about the Patented ACO Blue Roof System please click here
Dry Build Solutions for Vertical Landscaping
View the Grass Concrete entry on BPindex
Visit the Grass Concrete website
Wakefield based Grass Concrete Ltd, are best known for 50 years of Grasscrete, the permeable grass-paving system, but it’s not only at ground level where they have made an impression. They have a successful line up of Green Living Walls – landscape building blocks used for a variety of retaining walls.
Grass Concrete’s Betoconcept brand is a patented walling range of dry-build retaining walls that combines reduced noise levels with attractive vertical landscapes, offering a real variety of planting options.
Betoconcept incorporates; Betoatlas, Betoflor, Betotitan, Leromur, Betojar and Betonap products. offer vertical landscaping with different shapes and styles and can bring attractive planting with colour, shape or textured finish. The Betoconcept Living Walls are unique sustainable building blocks that provide adequate soil pockets for all types of plants, shrubs and climbers. Good drainage and water capture help keep landscape maintenance to a minimum.
Grass Concrete offer retaining walls for road highways or the simplest garden or boundary walls. The Betoconcept range brings different shapes and styles to accommodate planting on high or low walls.
With individual interlocking blocks and dry-build interconnectivity the range offers the ability to free-form wall layouts in single or terraced wall format. These interlocking units enable a quick and easy construction process even with complex curves, ground embankments and weight surcharges with various wall heights.
Dry built blocks interlock to form the required face angle and provide adequate soil pockets for all types of plants, shrubs and climbers. Good drainage and water capture with the stepped bank helps keep landscape maintenance to a minimum.
For the architect and landscaper Betoatlas retaining walls can be transformed into planting opportunities offering alternatives for the garden design.
To see more alternatives for Betoconcept landscape walls visit the website www.grasscrete.com
Many of today’s garden and boundary walls now feature planting, colour, shape and textured finish and Grass Concrete are pleased to be part of this progress.
Talk to the experts to find out more
Tel 01924 379 443
Guide to the domestic UK Building Regulations and compliance standards for developers and specifiers and what the new UK Labour Government mean for housing and energy?
View the Kingspan entry on BPindex
For specifiers and developers, keeping ahead of the latest developments and changes in Building Regulations and compliance standards is good practice that will never get old.
Householders rightly expect that Building Regulations will have been followed in construction of their new home, and that safety and compliance standards have been met. After all, it’s in everyone’s interest that new homes and everything in them and about them – heating, hot water and more – work reliably for years to come.
In this article, Andrew Ogden, Head of Technical Team at Kingspan Cylinders, guides you through the domestic UK Building Regulations and compliance standards that developers and specifiers must follow, focusing on heating and hot water.
Andrew explores:
- What are the UK Building Regulations in England and the devolved nations?
- What do the Building Regulations say about heating and hot water?
- What other regulations and requirements do new build specifiers need to know?
- What are the compliance standards for new build suppliers?
- What changes will there be to UK Building Regulations in the future?
Read the full article here.
And if you’re interested in the new UK Government’s outlook on all things housing and energy, check out Andrew’s other article in which he examines the new UK Labour Government’s plans for housing, energy and business and what they could mean for developers, specifiers, local authority and social housing providers.
He gets under the skin of legislative priorities for the coming year and looks further ahead at what’s likely to be in the pipeline for the next five years.
Andrew gets into:
- Housing, water and energy plans for 2024-25
- Skills, employment and investment plans for 2024-25
- Housing and energy priorities for the next five years
- Employment and business priorities for the next five years
Read Andrew’s feature article here.
Have you found these articles interesting?
Let us know what you think about the new UK Government’s plans and if you agree with Andrew‘s interpretation by completing our short survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/bpinov24
A Specifiers Guide to Blue Green Roofs and Schedule 3
View the ACO Building Drainage entry on BPindex
Visit the ACO Building Drainage website
The Flood and Water Management Act Schedule 3 is expected to be implemented in the next year, which means sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) will become mandatory in England for a significant number of new and retrofit developments. In this article, Neill Robinson-Welsh, Consultant at ACO Building Drainage discusses the coming changes and what specifiers need to be aware of, especially when it comes to urban schemes and projects that involve blue green roofs.
With the implementation of Schedule 3 just over the horizon, it is important for specifiers working on property development projects to have a clear understanding of the new requirements and how their responsibilities will likely be impacted. By understanding Schedule 3, specifiers will be better positioned to select the roofing solutions that fall in line with regulations and help mitigate their project’s impact on the environment.
Schedule 3: an overview
Schedule 3 is an umbrella term encompassing several requirements related to sustainable drainage. It comes from the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 and will mandate that all construction projects incorporate SuDS. While there is still some uncertainty, once it is implemented, Schedule 3 is expected to impact both new developments and renovation work on multiple dwelling units or properties over 100 square metres.
The demand for blue roofs is expected to increase
One major change with Schedule 3 will be that there will no longer be an automatic right to connect new and refurbished properties to public sewers. Instead, permission must be given, once appropriate SuDS have been put in place, by the local SuDS Approval Body (SAB). Each local authority will have its own SAB, and it is this body that ensures a drainage proposal meets the standards created by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
To meet Schedule 3 requirements, it is expected that demand for innovative drainage systems such as blue and blue green roofs will increase. These are viable solutions for many drainage projects in dense urban areas and have a proven record of their efficacy and sustainability.
Relevant regulations
It’s important that specifiers keep in mind that drainage should be selected with those once-in-a-century rainfall events in mind, and not just accounting for average conditions. Along with this consideration, blue roofs need to be installed in compliance with BS EN 12056-3:2000, the British Standard for gravity drainage on flat roofs, as well as BS 6229:2018, for flat roofs with continuously supported flexible waterproof coverings.
On a technical level, it is worth noting that blue and blue green roofs made from solutions like ACO’s RoofBloxx shallow geocellular crates are attenuation systems on roofs and not roofing systems as such. Once installed, they sit on top of a roof, but function separately. It is this distinction that allows roofers to follow BS EN 12056-3:2000[1]and BS 6229:2018[2], which are two seemingly incompatible requirements. In practice, it means water should not be allowed to sit on top of the waterproofing layers as that can risk causing structural damage to the roof.
The difference between blue and blue green roofs
Traditionally, roofs have been designed with the goal of removing water as quickly as possible. Blue and blue green roofs work very differently – intentionally slowing the flow of water off the roof using water storage, flow restrictors, and other features to avoid overwhelming sewers and create more sustainable drainage.
Blue roofs slow the flow of water from a roof mitigating flood risk copy
What differentiates blue from blue green roofs is that the latter is a home to live plants as well as flow slowing solutions. These plants can contribute to biodiversity and act as a natural carbon sink, improving the air quality of their immediate surroundings and offsetting carbon emissions. Many blue green roofs reuse some of the collected water to sustain the plants that fulfil the green aspects of the hybrid design which make them especially eco-friendly roofing options.
Industry changes can present challenges, so it is important for specifiers to be up to date and able to make the right product selections. These can be based on specialist knowledge and experience when specifiers partner with drainage experts such as those at ACO. Demand is growing for solutions that are compliant with Schedule 3 and, by being familiar with available blue and blue green roof options available, specifiers will be well positioned to make informed choices that will benefit the project, the end user, and the environment.
For more on blue roof specification please visit ACO.co.uk.
[1] BS EN 12056-3:2000 contains design guidance for roof and paved area drainage.
[2] BS 6229:2018 outlines best practice for the design, construction and maintenance of roofs with a flat or curved surface.
EPDs: What you need to know
H+H explores how to compare the embodied carbon of different construction products.
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are crucial for those who want to make informed decisions about building materials, with a focus on embodied carbon.
Many contractor firms and housebuilders have already published their own ‘zero carbon’ targets, prompting manufacturers to calculate the embodied carbon of their products. The expansion of building regulations to include requirements for embodied carbon is also under consideration. A proposed amendment, known as ‘Part Z’, would introduce mandatory assessments of whole life carbon emissions for construction projects if enacted.
EPDs are third party verified documents produced by manufacturers to detail the environmental impact of individual products.
H+H offers EPDs for our Standard Grade Celcon Blocks and our Vertical Wall Panels. We are also in the process of developing EPDs for our specialist grade Celcon Blocks.
Whole life or up front carbon emissions?
EPDs are valuable but only if the reader understands what the information is telling them and considers the context in which the product will be used. Comparing figures from different EPDs is not straightforward and it pays to look closely at the numbers rather than any commentary.
The focus should be on ‘whole life’ carbon emissions. This figure, also known as ‘cradle to grave’, includes: the raw materials and manufacture of a product; transport and construction; the building in use, and disposal of the material at the end of the building’s life. In an EPD these are categorised under sections:
- A1-A3 – Product
- A4-A5 – Construction
- B1-B7 – Use
- C1-C4 – End of life
Any embodied carbon figure quoting only the ‘up front’ manufacture (A1-A3) is not a true reflection of the environmental impact of a product.
For most people the most relevant figure in an EPD is the Total Global Warming Potential (GWP), measured in kgCO2e. This information is often given in a useful ‘Environmental Data Summary’ within the document, however extreme care must be taken to check what information the manufacturer has chosen to include here.
A manufacturer interested in full transparency should report the whole life carbon emissions figure: ‘GWP-total, A1-C4 (KgCo2e)’. The H+H EPD certainly includes this measurement in the data summary. However, manufacturers can decide what information they declare in the summary, so some will choose to publish ‘GWP-total, A1-A3’ here (the ‘up front’ figure), particularly if it shows a lower value than the whole life number.
The ‘Declared unit’ should also be reviewed as not all manufacturers report figures based on the same unit of measurement. For example, the figures for aircrete blocks are based on one metre cubed whereas some other products are measured by a square or linear metre. To compare like with like some additional calculation may be required.
Just as important is to take into consideration how the product will be used in the construction project. For example, the choice of material used for the structural walls will dictate what other materials are needed to complete the wall structure.
For aircrete internal walls the calculation is relatively simple since the wall is built entirely of aircrete. For composite panels the picture is more complicated as the embodied carbon of each individual product: timber, board, waterproof membrane, insulation, for example, will need to be considered. And again, the figure used should be the whole life embodied carbon.
Embodied carbon calculations are relatively new and there can be a lack of consistency in the way the figures are presented. Guidance and regulation will eventually standardise this, but in the meantime, it is down to the user to focus on the detail to make sure that the correct comparisons are being made.
To access EPDs for H+H products and for further advice on how to interpret an EPD click here.