A development of six new five-bedroom detached properties, close to Cirencester town centre, whose construction features the area’s distinctive natural Cotswold Limestone, is making full use of the benefits to the ClipPlate system and other products form the range of OMNIE Limited.
Preston Leigh is being built by award winning developer Ashford Homes (South-Western) to a very high specification, reflecting the exclusive nature of the scheme set amidst a market town whose architectural heritage reaches back to Roman times and just a few miles from the iconic Cotswold Water Park.
Despite their vernacular styling, the six prestigious properties make full use of contemporary construction technologies in meeting and in some respects, exceeding current Building Regulations. In fact their high insulation standards make them ideal to benefit from the characteristics of underfloor heating, which offers excellent occupant comfort and energy efficiency when run at lower temperatures than conventional radiators.
Ashford Homes site manager Simon Kay commented: “These six new five-bedroom properties on generous plot sizes, are traditionally built with a blockwork inner leaf and a 75mm partial fill cavity and elevations of coursed quarried stone reflecting the area’s famous architecture. The ground floors to the homes use beam-and-block construction covered by a DPM and then 150 mm of rigid PIR insulation. Then there is a further DPM, plus the vertical membrane which is fitted around the base of the walls before the OMNIE underfloor heating system is installed and our specialist sub-contractor lays the fibre reinforced screed.”
“This is my first project with Ashford Homes, but the company has used OMNIE systems successfully on all their developments since 2014. From my point of view the installation of the ClipPlate profiles went very smoothly. We had good design assistance from OMNIE in Exeter and response was rapid when we required materials, while the drawings were accurate and provided the installer with a definite starting point for setting out.”
All of the loops of 16.5mm polypropylene pipework, totalling 840 metres in length, are connected back to a nine port Precision-Flo manifold under the staircase, which is in turn fed from each building’s Worcester Bosch system boiler, which also supplies the homes’ three bathrooms via a main hot water storage vessel.
The installation of the OMNIE ClipPlate panels, pipework and manifolds was undertaken by one of Ashford Homes’ plumbing and heating contractors, Lee McClurg of L. McClurg Plumbing & Heating Ltd. For the upper storey to each house he fitted TorFloor panels and pipe, connecting to an eight port manifold.
ClipPlate is amongst the most popular options to OMNIE’s LayFast brands: being compact and suitable for in-screed applications. Pipe runs are simply pressed into the profiles without the need for joints and resist being disturbed as the screed is laid.
OMNIE offers a full range of solutions for rapid completion and restricted construction depths, as well as its TileOver range.