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Product category: Window Systems
News Release from: Kawneer UK | Subject: Curtain walling system
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial Team on 17 August 2006

Kawneer systems brave the waves at Tenby

At the new Lifeboat station in Tenby, Kawneer's curtain walling system has been combined with its AA603 tilturn windows and AA605 swing and 190 narrow-style doors.

Civil engineers Dean and Dyball stayed loyal to tried and tested curtain walling from Kawneer when it came to a precipitous project that had to meet a host of design, construction and logistic criteria The new £5million lifeboat station at Tenby in South Wales perches precariously in deep water off the cliffs below the historic ruins of Tenby Castle, in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and in Carmarthen Bay, itself a Special Area of Conservation

It replaces an old wooden boathouse built in 1905 whose slipway was no longer deep enough due to siltation, forcing the current lifeboat to be moored offshore, which slows reaction times considerably.

The new boathouse, the first to be built for the RNLI's next generation of 32-tonne, 25-knot, Tamar-class lifeboats, had to be designed to minimise its visual impact on the landscape but at the same time accommodate the worse combination of wind and wave loading in such an exposed location.

Chartered architectural technologist Steve Bond of Bondesign Associates had specified his preferred brand of curtain walling but Dean and Dyball proposed changing the specification to Kawneer since they knew Kawneer's systems would not only perform in the extreme environment but were better value for money.

In addition, their policy of social sustainability means they are keen to involve local businesses and Kawneer had an approved installer in the locality - AB Glass in Swansea.

It has been the only project the sub-contractor has had to work on wearing lifejackets.

AB Glass had a team of half a dozen men working at any one time on the project over several months and it proved such an experience that they have expressed their interest in being involved in more of the same.

This was despite the fact they were working sometimes only feet above heavy seas in all weathers.

Getting the plant and materials to site was just the first in a series of logistics challenges since heavy construction traffic was banned from Tenby's narrow Georgian streets and sea and weather conditions would have made shipping the supplies in from the nearest ports of Milford or Swansea some 19 miles away unpredictable.

All the plant and materials were stored on a Ministry of Defence site three miles away at Penally Bay.

An ex-NATO amphibious landing vehicle then moved 12 tonnes at a time to a standalone access platform with self-contained services, welfare facilities and craneage.

Steve Bond designed the new boathouse as a 26 x 23 x 14 metre, two-storey, steel portal frame structure on an 800mm thick concrete slab that sites 19 metres above the sand and three metres above high water.

The slipway is 68 metres long with a 1:5 gradient.

The slab base sits on 800mm diameter steel piles that were driven through up to six metres of seabed and toed in to the limestone bedrock.

Following careful negotiation, the planning laws were temporarily relaxed to allow the transportation of cement through the town outside of the busy tourist season.

This meant that cement for the slab pour could be delivered by ready-mix lorry before being pumped the final 200 metres along the coastal path.

When it came to planning the concrete pour for the deck slab, the significant eight-metre tidal range had to be considered and a top-hung falsework system was specified to reduce the risk of storm damage - a wise decision when one of the worse storms in 10 years blew up.

Kawneer's curtain walling system is an innovative dry-joined facade solution that does not need on-site sealants to ensure performance and is suited to vertical, sloped and facetted applications.

At Tenby, it has been combined with Kawneer's AA603 tilturn windows and AA605 swing and 190 narrow-style doors and interfaces with cedar boarding.

Installers AB Glass transferred the Kawneer materials, in an anodised blue finish, from the supplies platform to the boathouse build manually.

Technical director Jeremy Morgan said: "We could walk to the site and once we were there it was a normal installation apart from the fact we had to wear lifejackets".

"But the delivery of the materials was certainly different".

""Overall I think the client was extremely happy with it and we have said we would be interested in doing another one." Dean and Dyball regional director Neil Beresford added: "We were looking at alternative products and came up with Kawneer's that we have worked with for 10 years or so.

We knew it would perform and it was better value for money". Request a free brochure from Kawneer UK ...

""The highly practical and aesthetically pleasing lifeboat station provides a state-of-the-art facility for the maintenance and servicing of the lifeboat as well as modern welfare and training facilities for the volunteer crew.".

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