Sustainable Design

The School Governors and staff have worked extensively with the local community, stakeholders and design and educational professionals to produce a scheme that responds positively to the character of the area and is a high quality design. 

The building has been designed to make it as healthy, energy efficient and harmonious with the environment as possible.

High quality materials comprising:
Solid Bath stone masonry, Pre-weathered zinc cladding panels, Aluminium/timber composite glazing system designed to mitigate sun glare

Rainwater Harvesting
We are including a rainwater harvesting system which will collect the rain which falls onto the roof and then stores it in a tank until required for use. When required, the water is then pumped to the point of use, thus displacing what would otherwise be a demand for mains-water. In the process, a volume of water is kept out of the storm-water management system, thereby helping to reduce flooding risks. More recently, water demand has started to exceed supply, and localised flooding has become an issue. Industry experts are now recognising the important role that rainwater harvesting (also known as rainwater recycling, and greywater recycling) has to play in alleviating both these problems.

Ground Source Heat Pump

We are very pleased to announce that we have been successful in gaining a grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change : Low Carbon Building Programme for our Ground Source Heat Pump installation. Once the building is up and running we will have a display unit in the foyer so that the pupils and public and see the difference the heat pump is making to the energy consumption within the building.

In the UK, the earth - a few metres below our feet - keeps a constant temperature of about 11-12C throughout the year.
Because of the ground's high thermal mass, it stores heat from the sun during the summer. Ground source heat pumps (GSHP) can transfer this heat from the ground into a building to provide space heating and, in some cases, pre-heating domestic hot water. For every unit of electricity used to pump the heat, 3-4 units of heat are produced. As well as ground source heat pumps, air source and water source heat pumps are also possible.

How does it work?
There are three important elements to a GSHP:

Ground loop - comprises lengths of pipe buried in the ground, either in a borehole or a horizontal trench. The pipe is usually a closed circuit and is filled with a mixture of water and antifreeze, which is pumped round the pipe absorbing heat from the ground.

 Heat pump - although we may not know it, heat pumps are very familiar to us - fridges and air conditioners are both examples. A heat pump has three main components:

Evaporator - takes the heat from the water in the ground loop.

Compressor - moves the refrigerant round the heat pump and compresses the gaseous refrigerant to the temperature needed for the heat distribution circuit.

Condenser - gives up heat to a hot water tank which feeds the distribution system.

Heat distribution system - consists of under floor heating or radiators for space heating and in some cases water storage for hot water supply.Ground source heat pumps use pipes buried in the garden to extract heat from the ground. This is usually used to warm water for radiators or underfloor heating systems. It can also be used to pre-heat water before it goes into a more conventional boiler.