BUILDING products manufacturer Glidevale Protect is supporting Persimmon Homes by providing a range of products for its new Innovation Centre Trial House – a research project built offsite which showcases the latest housebuilding tech.
The Innovation Centre Trial House – a three-storey home built by Persimmon Homes to the latest building regulations – features technologies including a prototype brick façade which has been factory-fitted to the timber frame.
Glidevale Protect provided a mix of products including its Protect TF200 Extreme external wall breather membrane, Protect VC Foil Ultra reflective insulating membrane on the internal walls, Protect VP300 vapour permeable roofing underlay on the pitched roof and the Protect UniRoll dry fix ridge and hip system to provide ‘high level’ ventilation.
The products supplied will each play a role in improving thermal performance and airtightness as well as ensuring condensation control. The Innovation Centre Trial House offers the chance to monitor products like these to record their impact in a real-world setting.
Persimmon Homes will be using the Birmingham-based facility to trial and test new construction technologies with the aim of gaining insight into energy efficiency and the benefits of offsite construction methods using timber frame tech. It will also be used to train staff, subcontractors, suppliers, and manufacturers.
John Mellor, head of marketing at Glidevale Protect, said, “Hidden protectors like our external and internal wall reflective membranes can play an important role in building homes of the future as part of a fabric first approach, so it’s great to be able to get involved in projects like this with Persimmon Homes. We’re the only membrane producer to have supported innovative research projects with four major national housebuilders and we’re proud to continue to play our part in the future of housebuilding.”
In recent years, Glidevale Protect has provided products for research projects including Barratt Development’s Zed House, the Vistry Innovation Centre and Bellway’s Future Home at Energy House 2.0 at the University of Salford.
