Fire station of the future incorporates Kooltherm

Lives, energy and money are all being saved by Avon Fire & Rescue Service with the construction of a new fire station at one of its exiting sites in central Bristol, insulated with Kingspan Kooltherm K15 Rainscreen Board.

The service started to look for savings within its property portfolio due to its shrinking budgets, identifying Temple Back Fire Station as a target for improvement.

The existing building is uneconomically expensive to maintain and run due to the size and poorly insulated design of the existing building, having being built back in 1973 and housing the service’s headquarters.

Alongside AHR and AECOM consultants, Willmott Dixon are overseeing the design and construction of the station. The energy performance of the building envelope was a key consideration in order to keep running costs low.

To achieve the set target U-value of 0.23 W/m2k for the external walls of the building, Kingspan Koolthern K15 Rainscreen Board was specified meaning that useable internal space was not reduced.

With thermal conductivities as low as 0.020 W/mk, the class 0 rated product offers outstanding insulation performance. It was fitted to help break-up the largely brick facade, fitted behind a dark grey zinc cladding on the entrance corner of the building, helping to break-up the largely brick facade.

Kingspan Kooltherm K15 Rainscreen Board was specified to support the new station’s target of a BREEAM rating ‘Very Good’. The insulation holds a BRE Green Guide Summary Rating of A+ and is rated ‘Excellent’ under the demanding BES 6001: Responsible Sourcing of Construction Products standard. As a result, it can directly contribute towards the award of credits within the materials section of the BREEAM assessment.

The first insulation board for use in rain screen cladding applications to have achieved LABC Registered Detail Status was Kingspan Koolthern K15 Ranscreen Board. Consequently, this saved both time and cost as it helped to streamline the Building Control checking and approval process on the project.

Councillor Peter Abraham, Chairman of Avon Fire Authority explained that designing the building from scratch has allowed the fire and rescue serve to meet the needs of the modern service, in a smaller building that will be considerably more efficient to run.