System aids Gothic revival

Built in 1875, the Barnes Hospital is a French Gothic style building where patients from Manchester Infirmary were sent to convalesce. The Grade 2-listed building, which was closed in 1999 and left to deteriorate, is now receiving a new lease of life as developer Henley Homes creates the Barnes Village around it.

Alongside the 38 homes that are being constructed within the Victorian building, Henley is building a further 117 two- and four-bedroom townhouses in the hospital grounds. The challenge for Henley and its construction division Reis Construct was to find windows for the new-build houses that would complement the character of the hospital’s originals, while providing the best possible insulation and acoustic performance.

The original specification from Jeffery Bell Architects called for an aluminium and timber profile for the new houses. However, in liaison with the local conservation officer, Reis elected to substitute these for Eurocell’s Modus flush sash casement window in anthracite grey. The Modus windows also offered a more cost-effective solution while delivering better performance than the original specification.

“We looked at several issues when selecting the windows, including initial cost, thermal performance and ongoing maintenance requirements for our customers,” Henley Homes’ construction director Aaron Usmani said.

The Barnes Village development, close to the village of Cheadle in Greater Manchester, is close to the M60 and M56, which means traffic noise could be a nuisance – Modus’s multi-chamber profile, designed to increase thermal performance, also aids the windows’ acoustic performance.

Featuring a 75mm six-chamber profile system, the Modus range can achieve a U-value as low as 0.7W/m2K from a standard system using triple-glazed units.

Consisting of 50% post-consumer recycled PVCU as standard, this range of doors and windows has a smaller carbon footprint than products made or recycled outside of the UK; Eurocell employs dual material extrusion technology (DMET) that layers post-consumer recycled and virgin material simultaneously, so the recycled material is concentrated in the central core of the profiles where it cannot be seen once the door or window is installed.

Eurocell worked with Reis to find three window fabricators to provide quotes for the £750,000 windows contract, with Unique Windows System winning the tender.

“We needed to find firms that could handle the volume of windows and that had the right health and safety procedures in place for a site of this size,” Gordon Heron, Eurocell’s senior business development manager, said. “It’s also important to provide someone who is financially stable.”