Products - Trisomet® insulated panel system 135mm, Green Grey Matt HPS200® for both roof and walls.
Client -Sarah Beeny
Year - September 2024
Location – Somerset, Skokeford Farm.
It is not every day you get to help a TV celebrity and built environment icon, like Sarah Beeney - and particularly with such a great community project. However, Stokeford Studios is a notable example of just such an undertaking for young and old alike and is helping to drive the arts and creative endeavour in this rural community in north Somerset.
Building Systems UK, a Tata Steel Enterprise, was approached by Sarah’s team who were looking for a robust yet elegant solution for cladding an existing barn and to help them turn it from a store for farm equipment and hay bales, into a fully functional recording studio and performance space. Stokeford Studios in Somerset is now a new sustainable studio space for sound and television and a resource for the local community
Due to the buildings intended use as a space for recording and TV studio work, it was important to the client there was some degree of acoustic performance, but also a need to provide a thermally efficient envelope solution for year round use. The build was on a tight programme as the venue was due to host a tea dance for local senior citizens as part of the celebrations for King Charles’s coronation. This was an immovable deadline.
The barn - while derelict and used for agricultural storage - still had a perfectly serviceable steel frame requiring a new cladding solution. Renovating the existing frame reduced new steel use achieving a embodied carbon saving estimated at around 80 tonnes of CO2.
The barn conversion plans included an enclosed mezzanine area containing the recording studios and green rooms, and a large space for filming, recording and performances. The structural flooring specified for the mezzanine was Building System UK’s ComFlor® composite floor decking which also provided an acoustically efficient first-floor structure.
The choice of cladding solution was based on its ease of installation and appropriateness to the rural setting among existing farm buildings, but also on the need to provide a thermally efficient envelope. Trisomet® external trapezoidal insulated roof and wall panel system, in 135mm thickness, was specified providing an outstanding air permeability and thermal performance (U value of 0.15 w/m2k), far exceeding UK Building Regulations. A fully tested multi decade system guarantee, Platinum Plus, is available for the Trisomet® insulated panel system providing decades of worry-free durability.
Colorcoat HPS200® Green Grey Matt coating system was chosen to allow the barn to blend into the landscape. As the colour is a standard RAL, other items, such as the windows and doors, were also able to be colour matched. HPS200® is available with a guarantee for up to 40 years – providing peace of mind on the weathering performance for decades.
Building Systems UK developed, with the agreement of the client, a scheme for panel take-back, effectively meaning that the panels are leased and will be returned at end-of-life where the Trisomet® insulated panel system can be reused, or the steel elements go directly back into local steelmaking at Port Talbot.
Tata Steel recently announced a £1.25 billion investment in low CO2 steelmaking in the UK, which is pivotal in transitioning to a low carbon/net zero national economy. This investment will see a new electric arc furnace commissioned in 2028 reducing the direct emissions on site by 90%.
Through this work we generate a long lasting, durable and circular solution for UK construction products.
All systems supplied to Stokeford Studio’s are certified as responsibly sourced in accordance with BES 6001 Framework for Responsible Sourcing. And for exacting environmental reporting – Building Systems UK are able to provide bespoke Environmental Product Declarations (EPD’s) for your exact specification of panel or structural flooring and roofing systems – providing the most accurate whole life environmental impact reporting available in the market today.
Trisomet® insulated panel systems, with the HPS200® finish, are an ideal substrate for solar panels, allowing an ‘at construction’ or ‘retrofit’ of PV, with the durability to withstand the rigours of installation - and still remaining under the multi decade guarantee
Sarah Beeny took time out of her busy schedule to talk to Building Systems UK on her specification choices:
“I do feel that, if you are going to do any building work, you should use the materials which mean it’s going to have a very long life. Whatever building you build, however you build it, it uses the earth’s resources, so build it once, build it to last, and this will be good for another two hundred years I reckon”.
“We’re putting this fantastic steel cladding on the outside which is insulated, and it’s warm so we’ve got a solid thermal mass with no cold bridging, so anything we do make in the way of heat on the inside will stay inside so that’s why we chose it.”
“We chose steel…. I love that it’s made in the UK and if we can possibly do that, I think it’s good for the economy, but it’s also good for its carbon impact as well.
I like the fact its thermal qualities are amazing, it looks beautiful.”
EN-Construction-Contact-BSUK envelope
Building Systems UK technical team - Building Envelope
