Aluminium Extra
‘ High Rise , High Performance Door ’
High rise apartment living is on the increase in our cities and one of the fastest growing cities to live in is Manchester where the population has increased to 2.9 million . The city is widely recognised as being the capital of the Northern Powerhouse . Always at the forefront of innovation , Manchester was the world ’ s first industrial city and more recently where the BBC now calls home , located at Media City . With lower costs of living compared to London , it is no wonder that recent developments in Manchester offer a very good investment value .
» DESIGNED BY 5 PLUS ARCHITECTS and built by Russell Construction , the £ 85m Oxygen Tower comprises three individual towers of 32 , 16 and 10 storeys offering a ‘ neighbourhood ’ or ‘ vertical village ’ which houses a wide range of amenities for residents . Located in Manchester ’ s popular ‘ New Islington ’ district and just a short walk from the Northern Quarter , the city ’ s main rail station at Manchester Piccadilly and city centre employment zones . The project epitomises affordable quality with 372 apartments coupled with 12 street level luxury townhouses . As you would expect with high rise projects , 5 Plus Architects have chosen to use aluminium framed fenestration on the project and have specified Aluprof UK as the system provider .
The sliding door specified is a ‘ lift and slide ’ arrangement which offers a low threshold with high levels of air and watertightness due to that fact that the sliding door lowers down onto , and compresses weather seals once in the closed position . The MB-77HS system offers an impressive maximum Class 4 air tightness when tested to BS EN 12207 and a Class 9A ( 600Pa ) for watertightness when tested to BS EN 12208 . Possibly just important today is the importance of thermal insulation and the MB-77HS system can offer a very high insulation capability of up to 0.84 W / ( m2K ).
Whilst these standards are well accepted performance levels for doors and windows in normal use , balcony doors at 32 storeys high could be subject to much harsher weather conditions common to the North West . It was decided that the specific door configuration on the project should be tested to meet the much more onerous testing that curtain walling is often tested to by testing to CWCT standards . The main difference is that the normal window and door tests take place within a cabinet , whereas weather testing to CWCT is applied externally .
46 » FEB 2021 » CLEARVIEW-UK . COM