Enhancing Building Performance with Wraptite
The Wraptite external air barrier system from the A. Proctor Group has enhanced the performance of a considerate inner-city development of retirement living apartments working in partnership with the market-leading Hadley Group.
The Lichfield’s Bonds retirement living development for Pegasus Life consists of three apartment blocks in the heart of the cathedral city. Constructing on a compact site and nestled against local residents and businesses required a sensitive building approach and a considerate program design. An essential requirement for the client was ensuring that traffic was not disrupted and that the project positively contributed to the city.
The Wraptite external air barrier system from A. Proctor Group was installed in combination with the innovative, unique pre-panelized and fully load-bearing Hadley Frame offsite system, which is ideal for developments of low to medium rise structures.
The Hadley Frame system is designed to be installed off a structural concrete slab or transfer structure and provides a high strength-to-weight ratio and relative weight saving. In some cases, savings of 20-25% in weight can be achieved compared to traditional methods of construction.
Adam Salt, Business Development Manager of the A. Proctor Group explained, “one of the key benefits of installing the Wraptite air barrier system in the factory for the Hadley Group was minimal on-site disruption. Minimizing disruption on site provides significant benefits to local residents, particularly in the case of compact inner-city sites like the one at Lichfield.”
“The Wraptite air barrier system offers a safer and simplified membrane system. It provides a fully self-adhered vapor permeable air barrier certified by the BBA and combines the critical properties of vapor permeability and airtightness in one self-adhering membrane. The self-adhesive membrane is easily applied in the factory, bonded externally to the substrate, positioning the airtightness line away from the internal service penetrations ensuring a superior performance on the project.”
Joseph Sargeantson, Technical Director of the Hadley Group, explained. “The efficiency of the Hadley Frame system is significantly enhanced by the use of the Wraptite membrane from the A. Proctor Group. Combining Wraptite with Hadley Frame has enabled us to improve the air tightness and building performance and to achieve test results of 1.24m3/hr/m2.
“Wraptite is applied in the factory under controlled conditions for higher quality control and enables us to reduce on-site activity. This was particularly important on the compact site at Lichfield, where a key requirement was to minimize disruption in the local area.
“In addition to the enhanced air tightness performance, the self-adhesive design of Wraptite is ideally suited to offsite manufacture, easy and quick to apply, and provides valuable weatherproofing allowing follow-on trades to start to work much sooner.”
The superior airtightness performance of the Wraptite membrane from the A. Proctor Group delivers significant benefits to projects combining in-factory manufacture and on-site construction. The self-adhesive design ensures that the membrane is held firmly in place, even during transportation, maintaining the system’s quality from installation to build and completion.
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