Project Description
Huddersfield University Student Learning and Leisure Centre (SLLC) is built on the university campus in the heart of Huddersfield town centre. The development comprises four new buildings, all constructed using a single steel frame and rising to various heights from two to four storeys, with three of the buildings finished with a green roof. Once completed, the £22.5M centre was topped out by Professor Bob Cryan, vice chancellor, with a final sedum planted on the green roof to celebrate the end of the project.
The Challenge
In the original plans three of the buildings were designed with an extensive green roof and the fourth with a traditional warm roof. The roof finish contained a variety of coloured sedums, carefully selected to suit the different planting areas. The initial design allowed the majority of the rainfall to run off the roof into buried SuDS tanks at ground level. A possible reduction or elimination of these tanks was welcome since these are expensive to build and maintain.
The Solution
Following consultation with ABG’s technical department, the roof design was switched to a green roof across all four buildings. Furthermore, the original design was amended to allow the roof structure to attenuate rainwater collected from the roof surface using an ABG blue roof.
The decision to switch to a blue roof design offered a number of key advantages to the architects. The primary advantage being that the roof construction could be utilised to meet SuDS requirements without the need to install underground attenuation tanks. Installing an ABG blue roof required only minor detailing changes from the green roofs already specified; these included upgrading the thickness of the drainage layer to meet the storage requirements and the inclusion of restrictor outlet chambers to control the discharge from the roof. The simplicity of the ABG blue roof design meant that the revised roof, including the water attenuation capacity, was installed within the same time frame as originally scheduled for installing the green roofs, saving the client time and money.
The ABG Service
ABG Geosynthetics provided innovative designed alternatives working with the architect, contractor and waterproofing specialist.
ABG blueroof Blue Roof System with green finish and restrictor chamber
