FLOORMATE™ 500-A insulating Welsh Assembly-funded health project

Dow Building Solutions has manufactured and delivered 7,000m2 of FLOORMATE 500-A extruded polystyrene insulation for the groundbreaking Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan hospital in Blaenau Gwent, the first publically-funded hospital to be built in England or Wales with 100% single room, ensuite facilities to help control infection and improve privacy.

The 107-room, £53.7 million project has a planned completion date of 2010, and is the first major build as part of the regeneration of the former Corus steelworks site in Ebbw Vale. BAM Construction is managing the hospital’s development for the Welsh Assembly Government, through its 'Designed For Life' programme - Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan will be the first new built hospital to be delivered through the new partnering framework, with architects Nightingale Associates leading its design.

FLOORMATE 500-A, a floor insulation product manufactured with long-established insulation material, STYROFOAM, was specifically designed for high load bearing floors such as hospitals which not only need to cope with heavy sustained traffic, 24 hours a day, but need products that will remain durable over the building’s expected lifespan.

FLOORMATE 500-A has a nominal compressive strength of 500 kN/m2 and a design load (the load which will give maximum compression of 2% over 50 years) of 180 kN/m2, one of the highest in the FLOORMATE range. As an added benefit, the new ‘A’ grade version of FLOORMATE is manufactured using recycled CO2 as a blowing agent to create the familiar blue foam panels.

The amount needed to insulate the floors of the new Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan hospital – enough to cover 20 tennis courts - is thought to be among the biggest single orders of the material in the UK so far, and was supplied to the development through Sheffield Insulations’ Cardiff branch, part of the SIG Group which is the largest supplier of insulation materials in Europe.

Smiths (Gloucester) Ltd’s Welsh office managed the installation of thousands of the boards after Dow worked closely with Sheffield Insulations to supply the product to site within a tight timescale.

“We’ve worked with STYROFOAM insulation many times in the past, and are always pleased to see when it’s been specified as it’s so easy to use on site,” said Dan Dillon who is part of the Smith’s team working on the groundwork construction for the hospital. “It’s simple to store on pallets, easy for our installers to cut, doesn’t break when it’s walked on and best of all it’s got incredibly low water absorption which has been particularly helpful after the wet summer we had!”

Site manager for BAM Construction, Nick Jones, agreed: “Major projects such as this operate to incredibly tight timescales and we can’t afford overruns – Dow and Sheffield Insulations worked very hard to deliver significant supplies of a new product that has never been used on this scale before in the UK, and I’ve been impressed with the speed of installation. The fact that there is so little waste generated with STYROFOAM insulation products such as FLOORMATE is an added bonus.”

FLOORMATE insulation can be installed under or over the slab in groundbearing concrete floors and is suitable for use on suspended beam and block or timber floors. With a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of less than five, it qualifies for BREEAM and Code for Sustainable Homes insulation specification credits, and is available in three thicknesses, 50mm, 80mm and 120mm.

Dow Building Solutions offers floor insulation products for buildings ranging from residential right the way through to highly loaded cold stores and even very highly loaded floors such as aircraft hangars.

Email: Kirsten@kdpr.co.uk