Underfloor Heating - the Architect's Choice for Green Buildings

Underfloor heating continues to be a highly popular choice among architects, designers and developers anxious to place energy-efficiency at the heart of their new buildings. Two recent examples of innovative new developments in the UK education sector serve to underscore how important underfloor heating is when it comes to providing comfort, style and low energy bills.

The Driffield Times and Post reported this week on the official opening of a new Art, Community and Enterprise Centre, or ACE for short, at the east Yorkshire school. The centre boasts an enviable range of facilities, combining a centre for vocational and other learning with an outdoor space for hosting construction courses, a bespoke room for catering courses, an in-house manufacturing facility, plus a high-tech Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Suite, as well as five art studios, with one containing a kiln for pottery classes. The £4 million building seeks to use renewable energy wherever possible, with solar panels fitted on the roof and a ground source heat pump which uses geothermal energy to power the underfloor heating.

Also this week, the Grimsby Telegraph reported that a new development at Franklin College in the town finally began, with one of the school’s former car parks being used as the site for 10 new teaching spaces with fully-integrated ICT units. The new development is part of the school’s new property strategy, which has seen £1 million worth of investment this year. Boasting its own wide range of renewable energy and energy-efficiency features, such as underfloor heating powered by pumps which use residual heat from the building’s own air to keep temperatures cosy.