SCHÖCK ISOKORB CERTAINLY FIT FOR PURPOSE AT NEW NHS HEALTH CENTRE

A new Chiswick Health Centre is being built in Fishers Lane, West London. This is an NHS upgrade on the site of the previous building. The new facility, designed by architect Allies and Morrison and under construction with Willmott Dixon, will be a key hub for 60,000 patients and provide GP consulting and examination rooms, district nurse facilities and community rooms.

In a separate but associated building, sited around a landscaped central courtyard, the project will also deliver 55 affordable homes for key health workers such as nurses and physiotherapists.

Balconies inevitably feature throughout the accommodation areas and to avoid any risk of thermal bridging at the various connectivity points, the design detailing required a structural thermal break with total reliability proven performance. Specification required standard and bespoke Isokorb solutions - at the low and intermediate levels of the structure, the choice was the Schöck Isokorb T type K for concrete-to-concrete.

It is probably the best-selling European thermal break solution for this type of application and is manufactured using stainless steel and HTE (High Thermal Efficiency) modules with steel fibre reinforced UHPC (Ultra High-Performance Concrete). This guarantees the highest quality thermal separation of balconies and floor slabs, due to its low thermal conductivity and integral load-bearing capacity.

At the top of the building, bespoke Isokorb units had to be provided for the roof level colonnade beams, which needed to be thermally broken. These ‘specials’ involved thermal break units with point shear-load capacity for restricted wallover and wall-under conditions, fitting within a narrow RC ring-beam feature.

Due to differential thermal movement between internal and external slabs in the walkways on the project, Schöck have also provided structural steel dowels to transfer loads over the joints.

A fully compliant and dependable product range - Schöck offers the widest range of structural thermal break solutions from any European supplier and in the UK enables projects to meet full compliance with the necessary Building Regulations (and the impending Future Homes Standard criteria where relevant).

In addition to the Isokorb type used on this project, there are also solutions for concrete-to-steel, steel-to-steel, renovation projects – and even a maintenance free alternative to wrapped parapets.

All products have the security of independent BBA Certification, which provides NHBC approval. The temperature factor requirement (fRSI) used to indicate condensation risk, which must be equal to, or greater than 0.75 for residential buildings, is also easily met by incorporating the Isokorb. www.schoeck.com/en-gb/isokorb