Automatic doors
The refurbished Kingsthorpe Grove Primary School in Northampton features automatic glass entrance doors fitted with Geze UK’s Slimdrive SL sliding automatic operators.
The bi-parting doors are designed to reduce heat loss or gain and form an important part of architect Ellis Williams’ largely transparent design for the building. The door operators are just 7cm high and can be mounted almost invisibly to the glass.
LEDs light up Tower Bridge
The intricate details of London’s Tower Bridge will be visible at night for the first time thanks to an LED lighting scheme provided by GE Lighting. More than 2km of the firm’s Tetra Contour LED lighting has been moulded around the bridge’s stone and metal work and 90W LED floodlights installed on and around the bridge. The lighting scheme was developed to enhance the aesthetics of the bridge and minimise energy use with controls fitted to allow the lighting to be changed to suit different occasions.
Support allows PV panel installation
A new solar panel support has enabled photovoltaics to be installed on the lead roof of a Grade I-listed church near Chesterfield. The support “pods”, designed by the Lead Sheet Association and fitted by heritage roofing specialist Martin-Brooks, are built with expansion gaps to allow the natural movement of the lead roof.
The installation was completed in conjunction with Derby solar panel installer C-Changes and will enable the church to cut its energy bills and access higher rate feed-in tariffs.
www.leadsheetassociation.org.uk
How we fixed it…
Lockbridge Mill Flats
James Plaskitt, area manager at structural repair specialist Helifix, describes the solution to a partial wall collapse in a historic building in Huddersfield.
What sort of building is this? Lockbridge Mill Flats is a converted former factory dating from the early 1900s, owned by Places For People. It was built using traditional local stone and features 600mm-thick rubble-filled walls.
So what exactly happened? A contractor carrying out cleaning and re-pointing works noticed a severe bulge in the wall at around the fourth stairwell, and soon afterwards part of this section came down in a pile of rubble. You very rarely see a failure of this degree and because it was a block of flats and some height up it was quite a challenge. The entire tower needed temporary propping and tenants inside the flats had to vacate until the repairs were completed.
What was your approach? After the tower was propped, several pairs of long, lightweight stainless steel helical bars, known as HeliBars, were bonded into the mortar joints at five different levels around the corners of the tower to provide lateral support to the wall. Then, 700 injection grouted ties, called CemTies, were installed in a 450mm x 450mm staggered grid across the tower’s four elevations to pull the two leaves of stonework together and consolidate the rubble fill.
Did you consider any other options? The only viable alternative would have been to take down the tower and rebuild it, which would have obviously been very expensive. Our solution lent itself perfectly to this type of failure and aesthetically the repair work is invisible now completed.
