British Gypsum provides sustained support to Cawrey Homes

British Gypsum has worked with Leicestershire housebuilder, Cawrey Homes, to deliver its first Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) Level 4 scheme.

As well as supplying a range of plaster and drylining solutions for Fielding Meadow, a development of 26 two, three and four bedroom homes in Ratby, British Gypsum provided extensive consultancy and advice to support the company’s sustainable construction strategy.

In line with its fabric first approach, for Fielding Meadow, Cawrey Homes chose to address energy efficiency as an inherent part of each home’s design, combining archetypal brick and block construction, with a distinct contemporary style and proficient micro-generation technologies. In line with its fabric first strategy, Cawrey Homes needed to work closely with materials suppliers, so turned to plaster and drylining manufacturer, British Gypsum, part of the Saint-Gobain group, for help.

To support Cawrey Homes in going over and above Part E requirements, British Gypsum also specified a system of products for each property’s habitable rooms using its 43mm Gypframe Acoustuds and acoustic partition roll, with 15mm Gyproc SoundBloc RAPID plasterboard either side, plus one coat of Thistle Multi-finish for added airtightness.

With an understanding of the housebuilder’s aims, British Gypsum provided extensive consultation at specification stage, recommending a specific combination of solutions including Thistle Tough Coat undercoat and Thistle Multi-Finish plaster to achieve a durable, robust finish on ground floor external walls and partitions.

In addition to specification support, British Gypsum also supported the housebuilder to achieve the 68 points required to attain CSH Level 4. Dave Walgate, technical director at Cawrey Homes, explains: “Cawrey Homes has worked with British Gypsum for a number of years, and in that time it has helped us make many areas of our business more efficient and sustainable. For instance, we use British Gypsum’s Plasterboard Recycling Service to manage all our plasterboard waste, which has significant benefits from a cost and time-efficiency perspective, and means we’re minimising our impact on the environment too.

“Recently, British Gypsum was awarded a BES 6001 Very Good rating for a number of its core products, which has also been extremely beneficial for us. Now, it has been easier for us to get full marks for the materials section of the Code for Sustainable Homes which obviously makes our job that little bit easier.”

Alongside a range of British Gypsum solutions, Cawrey Homes incorporated a number of design features into its Fielding Meadow development, including a 10-degree pitch sedum roof that reduces water run-off by 40 per cent and carefully orientated windows to maximise solar gain. Combined, all measures have led to a 12 per cent reduction in air permeability and a 38 per cent improvement in heat loss compared to pre-CSH properties.

Concluding, Dave added: “By working closely with manufacturers such as British Gypsum, we’ve wholeheartedly achieved our vision. Architecturally, the properties break the mould of conventional, standardised new build homes, and are distinctive and eye-catching in their design. This aesthetic, combined with the integration of forward-thinking energy efficient measures, microgeneration technologies and robust traditional construction methods, mean Fielding Meadow truly is a development of homes for the future.”