Ecobuild expo highlights PU's energy-efficiency

Polyurethane insulation’s role in the development of sustainable housing solutions was clear at the Ecobuild exhibition and conference in London. Jane Denny reports.

The exhibition at East London’s ExCel convention centre featured several hundred stands and the importance of PU to improving energy efficiency in construction was not understated.

Show sponsor Kingspan exhibited at the show, alongside Recticel and Celotex, and a number of smaller industry players who used the event to promote the latest company developments and outline the USP of their particular insulation panels.

Danny Kearney, Xtratherm’s technical and marketing manager, said the Navan, Ireland-headquartered had worked with the Concrete Block Association to show how its products could combat property heat loss thermal bridging issues. “We were the first company in the UK to develop a BRE-approved thermal bridging modelling in the UK,” he told UTECH-polyurethane.com

In a section of the site dedicated to associations serving the sustainable construction industry, a team of apprentice builders from an Essex, uk-based college were demonstrating how to put together a house with locally-sourced construction materials that will create a property with a U-Value of 0.18 (w/m2k).

The Precast Flooring Federation – an affiliate of the Mineral Products Association –was also promoting a geo-tag system it had built up of sustainable building products. By using the tool, said the association’s representative at the show Nick Gorst, products could be largely locally-sourced – increasing the sustainability of the project.

The association’s stand featured a mock-up of a typical UK building site, but with a sustainability edge. Xtratherm’s PIR insulation was used.

Recticel

Meanwhile, at Recticel’s stand, company representatives were promoting 0.18 (w/m²k) U-Value insulation standard products from the company’s range.

Nik Hood, Recticel Insulation’s UK business development manager, was representing the Belgian firm at the show. He said part of Recticel’s USP was how the company had considered the way builders construct homes.

The space Recticel’s boards allow between the brickwork and the insulation fits “with traditional bricklaying methods,” he said.

“Manufactured at 90mm to work within 100mm cavities, 115mm for 125mm cavities and 140mm for 150mm cavities, the compact design of Eurowall + leaves space for bricklayers to use conventional installation techniques. With enough room to ‘roll’ the outer leaf bricks into place, bricklayers’ work takes the same time to complete.”

Quinn

Lee Gillman, commercial manager (GB), said the show had been a good one, with many approaches from potential new customers.

Quinn worked with Tyrone and Fermanagh-based South West College in Northern Ireland to create a virtual home that hundreds of visitors effectively passed through while sitting at a computer desktop.

Gillman said although not as much a household name as the likes of Recticel and Kingspan, Quinn was well-served to meet the needs of the UK insulation market. “What we are seeing is a growing interest in some thicker insulation boards, sometimes up to 200m,” which he said, “went against others’ logical thinking.

“The issue is smarter building,” he said, “and construction theory moving more to building with each property’s particular environment and aspect in mind. An example would be, why would you necessarily need equal insulation on a south-facing wall as you might have on a north-facing one?’”

BASF polyurethanes

David Philips of SPT Systems – an Inverness, UK-based company that developed its own brand of structural insulated panels (SIPs) using BASF polyurethane core materials – said traditional building methods would be extinct in five years. The thermal core comprises BASF Elastapor H PUR foam insulation

He told UTECH-polyurethane.com that the accuracy that is achievable with factory manufactured construction components far outweighs that of brickwork carried out on site. The speed that a building can go up is an additional advantage.

“We could erect a school building within four weeks,” he said.

Peter Morgan, media and communications manager at Kingspan, said the firm’s presence at the show was a success. “Day one and two were in particular were extremely busy.”

The launch of a new app that calculated U-Value through of series of droop-down answer choices had attracted a great deal of interest too. “From DIY-ers all the way up to architects, the feedback is that we have created useful tool.”

Ecobuild ran from 8 – 10 March 2016.