Stopsley High School

The Project

Stopsley High School is a mixed Comprehensive and Community College that is located in the northern suburb of Luton. Achieving ‘Specialist Sports College’ status in 2002, the school educates children from 11-16 years old. In 2013, the school received funding from the Government, via the Priority School Building Programme (PSBP), which aims to address the needs of schools most in need of urgent repair. For Stopsley High School, this meant a combination of some buildings being demolished and rebuilt while others receive upgrades. To support the increase of pupil capacity from 990 to 1350, a new school building was built to provide 64 classrooms, a four court sports hall, creative and music spaces and a special needs facility.

With the aim to complete construction in August 2016, main contractor, Interserve worked with sub-contractor, Briggs Amasco and Acoustic consultant, Arup to deliver a modern, purpose-built and well-insulated school building. The brief was to provide pupils with a thermally efficient and acoustically sound environment that is conducive to learning.

The Challenge 

Stopsley High School had to be built to the highest thermal and acoustic performance specifications. The roofing solution for the new school building needed to overcome a number of performance challenges. The team at Briggs Amasco was tasked to achieve a thermal performance of 0.15 W/m2K in the school building. It was also required to meet the stringent acoustic performance requirements of BB93, in order to achieve a target noise reduction of Rw44Db. Alongside this, a roofing solution that could control the noise generated in high traffic areas of the school, such as the sports hall and music rooms was desired.

The ROCKWOOL Solution

The team at Briggs Amasco devised a roofing solution that would meet the high thermal and acoustic performance standards that were set out in the brief. ROCKWOOL insulation products, including HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) Underlay and ROCKWOOL HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) were specified.

Approximately 600m2 of the 150mm HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) Underlay and 600m2 of the 105mm HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) were installed on the flat roof of the newly built school building which includes 64 classrooms, a four court sports hall, creative and music spaces and a special needs facility.

Offering maximum density and exceptional dimensional stability, HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) boards were adhesively applied on the roof of the building. The HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) Underlay was placed across the roof, followed by the HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) roof boards providing a non-combustible surface that was ideal for the application of the torch applied bitumen waterproofing system.

The HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) boards have helped to deliver a comprehensive thermal, sound and fire safe solution that is suitable for this type of multi-purpose application. HARDROCK® Multi-Fix (DD) products are excellent sound level controlling products and fully compatible for use with other flat roofing systems.

Summary

The thermal, acoustic and fire resistance properties of ROCKWOOL products have provided Stopsley High School with a roofing solution that is thermally efficient and provides great acoustic properties to enable effective teaching and learning. Additionally, the excellent fire resistance properties of the ROCKWOOL products provide a high level of fire protection that will last the lifetime of the school building.