Our Systems and Products:- Timber Frame Systems
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The Company Useful Information:
- NBT Seminars and Demonstrations at Ecobuild
- NBT Demonstrates Passivhaus Solutions at Ecobuild
- High Performance Homes Benefit From Sustainable Construction
- Severn Gorge Puts Trust in NBT
- NBT insulates ‘English building’ museum
- NBT insulates multi award winning Waingels College
- NBT insulates luxury Scottish countryside home
- NBT insulates award winning recyclable school building
- NBT insulates ‘Outstanding’ SusCon
- NBT insulates the UK’s first affordable certified Passivhaus
- NBT envelope succeeds at Expo
- NBT meets ‘Excellent’ criteria for One Brighton
Severn Gorge Puts Trust in NBT
Natural Building Technologies’ (NBT’s) Pavawall and Pavaroof systems have been used to help create an award-winning, high performance structural building envelope for the new Severn Gorge Countryside Trust headquarters building at Telford in Shropshire. The building was the overall winner of the 2011 Shropshire Building Excellence Awards and a finalist in the West Midlands region LABC Building Excellence awards.
The NBT solution combines excellent thermal performance and breathability to deliver a warm and healthy internal environment for the building. Furthermore, the materials used to create the structure are all from highly sustainable sources.
As well as delivering U-values of 0.20 W/m2K and 0.15 W/m2K for the walls and roof respectively, the NBT constructions contributed to an airtightness of 0.64 m3/hr/m2@50Pa, greatly outperforming the Building Regulations’ requirement of under 10 m3.
As well as keeping the building warm in winter, Pavawall and Pavaroof benefit from high thermal mass, which is essential to prevent summertime overheating.
The breathable properties of the wall and roof ensure that any moisture that gets into the building fabric is dealt with safely and efficiently, minimising the risk of interstitial condensation often associated with conventional buildings. This breathability safeguards the long-term integrity of the building’s structure, as well as ensuring a healthy living environment for the building’s occupants through the prevention of mould growth and other pathological organisms.
The Pavawall construction for the Severn Gorge project utilises a conventional timber frame structure, in this case manufactured offsite, as cassettes. Interlocking NBT woodfibre insulation boards are affixed to the outside of the studs, with OSB board providing racking strength installed on the internal face. All seams were taped for maximum airtightness. The 150mm deep wall studs of the timber frame were fully filled with sheepswool insulation. The external wall finish features vertically-aligned green larch cladding, sourced from the building’s surrounding woodland and wider Shropshire.
The Pavaroof construction features a similar build up to the walls, using thicker woodfibre insulation boards and an external finish of western red cedar shingles.
The interior of the building features a large, open plan office, meeting rooms and storage. Heating is provided in the form of two 8kW wood burning stoves, with the provision of a gas fired back-up system. A mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR) system recovers heat from the expelled air to pre-heat the incoming, fresh air.
According to Russell Rowley, the Severn Gorge Countryside Trust manager, “The building has performed brilliantly. Even in temperatures as low as -16ºC, it feels nice and warm inside and that’s with only using the wood burning stoves.”
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