After only four years of use, part of one of the UK’s first zero-carbon eco-schools will be demolished and rebuilt amid a £7m legal row over extensive roof leaks.
Many of the 310 students at Dartington Primary School, near Totnes, Devon, have decamped to temporary accommodation erected in the school grounds until their new accommodation is complete.
Devon County Council is planning to sue architect White Design and contractor Interserve for more than £7m.
The council estimates that will be the amount needed to make the repairs and pay for temporary accommodation at the Dartington Church of England Primary and Nursery School, which opened in February 2010.
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In a statement, it said: “We’ve issued letters of intent to the architects and contractors amounting to over £7m. That covers the costs of the construction work and the cost of temporarily relocating the school, including the temporary classrooms.
“We are planning to demolish and rebuild Cluster 4, which houses the admin accommodation, hall and kitchen. The other classroom clusters will be repaired. The entire project should be completed by May 2016. In the meantime, the school is being housed in accommodation on the school site.”
The school was built from Eurban cross-laminated timber panels and features a raft of green technologies, including PV panels
The school – described in this Building Design article from July 2010 – consists of four clusters of buildings built from Eurban pre-fabricated cross-laminated timber panels, with the walls insulated with Pavatherm natural wood fibre and clad in locally-grown sweet chestnut.
The award-winning school was also fitted with a battery of green technologies, including air source heat pumps providing underfloor heating, a heat recovery system, and roof-mounted PV panels providing some electricity and hot water. Rain water was collected in a harvesting system and a pond filters water for grey-water use.
Ramboll was structural engineer for the scheme, and the M&E engineer was Arup.
The legal action comes a year after a Devon council internal report raised the possibility of litigation after hiring two independent technical specialists to review the scheme.
It says: “The technical specialist report highlights that the major cause of the on-going water ingress is likely to be the result of the scheme design. The report also highlighted complexities within the rainwater harvesting system and concern with the specified use of materials.”
The second technical report covered similar ground to the first, and also looked at the floor and sub-floor voids.
According to the Building Design article, the rainwater harvesting system was unusual, with the water stored and filtered at roof level before passing through to the toilet cisterns.
In a statement, Interserve said: “As this is currently the subject of legal action, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
White Design, based in Bristol, has said only that the matter is with its insurers.
