Kingspan Insulation’s Kooltherm and Therma products have been installed as part of the restoration of a dilapidated church, featured on Channel 4’s Restoration Man series.
St Peter's Church originally built in 1874, was constructed on a steeply sloping pedestrian hill leading down to the main harbour in the picturesque Brixham fishing village. Although the church is only 100 metres from the water, it is approximately 25 metres above sea level.
Neil Worrell and Jackie Robinson took on the restoration project when they came across the Church on a detour during a visit to Cornwall and even though it was clearly ‘derelict, damp and dangerous’ they thought it would make the perfect project for them.
Neil Worrell RIBA of Hotel Planning Ltd commented “Insulating the Church to current standards was always going to be a challenge, we overcame this by lining the whole of the basement wall area (over 100 m2) with 60 mm thick Kingspan Kooltherm K18 Insulated Plasterboard. This really helped us because it was after we had waterproofed the external walls and it could be simply fitted together and fixed back to battens on the external walls. The lower part of the basement was raised up with a fully insulated floor using 125 mm thick Kingspan Thermafloor TF70 boards which gave us the required insulation whilst also bringing the finished floor up to the required level.”
Kingspan Thermapitch TP10 was used for all of the church roofs, on the main church it was used on the outside of the roof structure, and on the 'rear' roof areas it was used within the roof structure. All roofs had a layer of nilvent breathable membrane under the battens holding the Penrhyn and Ffestiniog reclaimed Welsh slates on the roof.
Neil Worrall said “I specified Kingspan for the build as they had the product range and thermal qualities required for the project, in addition the products were clean and easy to handle and store on site. I was extremely happy with the Kingspan Technical Services Team who prepared all the thermal calculations for the walls, floor and roofs of the project, all of their configurations incorporated existing materials and structures where applicable (i.e. existing timber roof structures 140 years old).”
“We are thrilled with the restoration and it has really exceeded our wildest dreams. We tried to restore it appropriately and with some interesting and unusual design ideas such as the brightly coloured lounge with 'minstrel galleries' and glass floors and the final effect is a complete transformation from the sad and unloved building which we started with. We are delighted to guarantee the building's future for Brixham and for the local community. And we also love living in this fantastically friendly fishing village.”
All Kooltherm and Therma products deliver outstanding performances with thermal conductivities as low as 0.020 W/m.K and 0.022 W/m.K respectively and are amongst the most thermally efficient insulation products commonly used.
Neil and Jackie planned and restored the Church as their first home together, and look forward to enjoying many years in Brixham after the pressures and time spent restoring the dilapidated building as their first major joint project.