Schöck retrofit solution for major office-to-residential conversion

It is currently one of the largest office-to-residential schemes in the capital and will realise a mix of a 290 residential units, including studios, one bedroom and two bedroom apartments. Many of the new units will benefit from a cantilevered steel balcony, supported to the existing reinforced concrete slab and naturally, structural thermal performance is a key consideration. Market-leading thermal break suppliers Schöck are the go-to company for this type of specification with the availability of their innovative Isokorb type RKS for refurbishment applications.

First introduced into the German, Austrian and Swiss markets, primarily as a retrofit product, the type RKS has a 120mm insulation element thickness and is a load-bearing thermal break that allows the replacement, or addition, of balconies to an existing building by connecting cantilevered steel balconies to the reinforced concrete slab.  It minimises thermal bridges at concrete-to-steel connections on cantilever balconies and transfers negative moments and positive shear forces. This offers a number of different options for integrated, energy-efficient building renovation and guarantees enormous scope for design.

Refurbishment to Passivhaus standard

An additional feature is that the product has been fully certified as an “Energy saving component” by the Passivhaus Institute in Darmstadt, Germany, which highlights the importance of thermal performance, even for refurbishment projects of this type.

Schöck is a specialist in the provision of advanced solutions for thermal energy structural insulation and best known for its range of structural thermal break units. A range which allows connections to be made between concrete-to-concrete, concrete-to-steel and steel-to-steel, with all units meeting full compliance with the relevant building regulations. It also provides LABC registration and the highest level of BBA Certification. The requirement described in BRE IP1/06 – a document cited in Building Regulations Approved Documents Part L1 and L2 and Section 6 in Scotland – that the temperature factor used to indicate condensation risk (fRSI) must be greater than, or equal to, 0.75 for residential buildings is easily met by incorporating the Isokorb.

In addition, there is also compliance with the Government Standard Assessment Procedure, SAP 2012, concerning CO2 emissions from buildings and respectively heat losses through non-repeating thermal bridges. Here, the lambda values of the Schöck Isokorb enable energy loss in various connective situations to be reduced by as much as 84% to 91%.

For your free copy of the new Thermal Bridging Guide and / or the Schöck Specifiers Guide  – contact the company on 01865 290 890 or visit www.schoeck.co.uk