Kingspan TEK provides offsite solution for luxury homes
Story by
June 20, 2019
The Silverlake development of sustainable homes in West Dorset is setting the standard for low-impact construction with the Kingspan TEK Building System. The bespoke holiday homes and on-site spa have all been constructed from the versatile off-site solution, ensuring excellent project efficiency.
Silverlake is an exciting new development, constructed by Conservation Builders, which offers lakeside holidays homes amongst the beautiful heathlands, woodland and lakes of West Dorset. The residential community sits nestled within a carefully managed nature reserve, providing the ultimate retreat where people, ecology and innovative, award-winning architecture are brought together. The Habitat First Group development offers residents the chance to be involved from the early stages of the design process. The Kingspan TEK Building System supported this bespoke construction approach.
The newbuild project is designed to be an exemplar of sustainable development from design to future operation, and the latest phase utilises 4,000 m2 of the Kingspan TEK Building System for the walls and roofs of the new properties. The Kingspan TEK Building System was selected as it allowed for predictable offsite construction and design flexibility, as well as providing exceptional out-of-the-box fabric performance.
Kingspan TEK panels comprise a high-performance insulation core sandwiched between two layers of OSB/3. They were designed and factory-cut to the project’s unique specifications by Kingspan TEK delivery partner, Glosford Timber Solutions. This offsite production process minimised site waste and allowed the panels to be delivered to site to a pre-arranged schedule and quickly erected.
Mike Fleming from Glosford Timber Solutions commented: “The Kingspan TEK Building System was chosen for the speed of build it allows, its excellent thermal performance and the off-site element which enabled reduced numbers of trades on site. Another key benefit of using Kingspan TEK is that it allows flexibility of design, necessary for a project like this. Although the units are a standard house type, almost every property sold has customer variations which we had to cater for – one house even has a eyrie added to the second floor which allows the client to walk through the bedroom into a sort of hide to birdwatch.
“A real challenge on this project has been the individuality and complexity of design: most of the properties have integral balconies and some have large terraces on the top floor where the clients want hot tubs. The spa building was also a challenge as it has a roof terrace with balustrade which had to be designed into the Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) frames.”
The design of the buildings in the Silverlake development have lifetime energy efficiency in mind. In addition to their excellent thermal performance, the unique jointing system and OSB/3 facings also helped to minimise air-leakage from the properties. This supports the project’s vision for a sustainable community.
