A £23 million showpiece development in the South West of England is under construction using Knauf Aquapanel Exterior from Knauf Drywall to provide a swiftly installed, weatherproof envelope that is also an attractive façade.
Marlborough Park near Swindon is a development by Places for People on the site of the former Burmah Castrol HQ. It consists of 204 properties of which 36 are houses, 168 are apartments and 14 flats are over-garage apartments. The bulk of these are of timber frame construction with a masonry façade that is then rendered but the main contractor, Wates Living Space, needed a robust weatherproof board that could be rendered in the areas where there was no blockwork, such as around dormers and the stepped wall areas above the roof line.
“We chose Knauf Aquapanel Exterior because it is strong, waterproof and can be fixed directly to the timber frame without any extra structural support. It gets the building weatherproof quickly and the render can be applied directly,” comments Adrian Moore, Senior Design Manager at Wates Living Space.
The Aquapanel Exterior Cement Board is also easily installed with no extra skills required so, in this case, it was applied by the joinery contractors, A1 Carpentry Services of Bristol. It was rendered by E & H Drylining of Melksham in Wiltshire. In total 1500 m2 of Knauf Aquapanel Exterior Cement Board was used together with Knauf Aquapanel Exterior Stainless Steel Screws.
Offering all the benefits of a dry panel system with the strength of brick and block, Aquapanel Exterior Cement Board Outdoor is a robust, non-combustible building panel made of aggregated Portland cement with coated glass fibre mesh embedded in back and front surfaces. It resists water with no swelling or loss of stability, is weatherproof and is unaffected by the freeze-thaw cycle. The board requires no special tools or processes for installation – simply score and snap – and can even be curved.