London & South East

London’s largest single estate regeneration project nears completion

Ethelred Estate Elkington PointThe largest single estate regeneration project in London, comprising the wide-ranging refurbishment of 300 flats in the 23 storey Brittany Point, 20 storey Ward Point and 18 storey Elkington tower blocks on Lambeth’s Ethelred Estate is nearing completion. The scheme is geared to providing decent homes inside exemplar energy efficient buildings.

The project is being carried out for the London Borough of Lambeth by Breyer Group.

The works, which have been carried out within one block at a time, include the installation of new kitchens, including new sinks, worktops, cupboards, flooring, tiling, and decoration, with each kitchen having been designed in close consultation with the tenants. Bathrooms are also being refurbished including new bathroom suites, flooring and tiling. Other works include re-wiring and the installation of new plumbing and  central heating served by communal boilers and a combined heat and power plant. The central plant room was completely replaced with four condensing boilers, 72,000L thermal storage and a a 310kw combined heat and power plant (CHP).

The CHP unit provides heating plus electricity which supplies the communal areas as well as being sold back to the residents.

In addition, each block has its own heat station plant room that converts LTHW primary heating into secondary heating and hot water via plate heat exchangers (PHE). This element of the scheme, carried out by Parker Bromley, also involved the removal of all redundant services including the original warm air heating systems.

Once these works were completed, the new central heating, hot and cold services and risers amongst other energy efficiency measures were installed. Running in parallel, the electrical works consisted of new electrical submain works and complete electrical rewires including new consumer boxes. It was also necessary to use core drilling so ventilation

fans could be fitted to all bathrooms and kitchens.

Additional works on the scheme comprise the complete refurbishment of communal areas including the installation of new lifts, new suspended ceilings, new flooring and decoration throughout.

External works comprise the installation of new aluminium framed windows and new insulated render, overclad with 8mm insulation to improve the U values of the buildings; re-roofing with a Sedum green roofing system and the installation of photovoltaic panels on the building elevations to power lighting within the communal areas.Ethelred Estate Brittany Point

A podium level nursery has also been refurbished, including re-asphalting externally and improvement works have been carried out to soft play areas.

A further element of the scheme involves the re-wiring of lighting within the buildings’ undercroft car park areas.

Trainees from within the local community are given the opportunity to receive customised training on the professional construction disciplines on the project. Breyer committed to up-skilling a minimum of 15 training placements for local residents, provided through trade and management roles.

Breyer’s unique 360 degree training programme was designed to ensure that trainees are involved in the project management and delivery of targeted initiatives.

The project, which has been on site for two years, is due to be completed at the end of November 2011.

The project was selected by Ecostiler, Energy Efficient Communities as a show case project at South Bank University’s Keyworth Centre in London.

An Ecostiler project is a scheme funded by the European Concerto programme. Ecostiler Partners have worked to install and retrofit a range of low carbon technologies and energy efficiency improvements in urban and rural dwellings. These have including Biogas Plants, District Heating, Photovoltaics Panels and Wind Turbines.

Key sustainable features of the Ethelred Estate project include: 80% carbon reduction (exceeding the governments projected targets), introducing high performance rendering to all external elevations, installation of photovoltaic (PV) panels to south and west elevations of all blocks, recycled aluminium windows with high performance double glazed units, minimising reflections,  high insulating green Sedum roof covering, a CHP power source with ESCO arrangements, and a building performance comparison with before and after Infra Red Survey.

Breyer Group is a forward thinking construction and specialist roofing contractor and they are continuing to establish themselves as industry leaders. Recent diversification into emerging markets has included the incorporation of responsive repairs, renewable energy, retrofit technology and client focused ICT integration within the company’s projects.

Breyer offer a full range of design, refurbishment and construction services, which actively improve the fabric of the local communities in which they live and work.

About the author

Roma Publications