Fabric ducting and Bryanston School

Projects Technical

Fabric ducting and Bryanston School

Originally designed by renowned Scottish architect, Richard Norman Shaw, Bryanston School is an independent school educating over 800 pupils between the age of 13 to 18 in Blandford Forum, Dorset. It was founded in the late 1920s by Jeffrey Graham Jeffreys, an Australian schoolteacher who moved to London to teach chemistry. Seven years later, he opened the school using the Dalton Educational Plan as the founding philosophy of Bryanston – “both old and new”.

Enhancing the quality of the student experience is a priority for the school, and one area in which they have invested heavily since its establishment is in sport. The school’s “sports centre” is undergoing a multi-year redevelopment, the first phase of which is complete. The governors’ vision for the sports centre is “to help maximise engagement and personal achievement for…pupils in all areas of sport and physical exercise.”

The centre’s six-lane 25m swimming pool and 200m2 gym were the main priorities of the first stage of development. There is also a performance sport room incorporating a 40m sprint track, 2 AMTI BP600900 force platforms, two squat racks, and 10 motion analysis cameras. The sports centre also provides three sports halls, an indoor bouldering room, 3 indoor fives courts, and four squash courts.

Cost and usability considerations

Correctly ventilating pool areas has always posed a significant challenge for air conditioning providers. It’s a necessary challenge however because the right conditions encourage pupils to stay longer and to come more often. A well-ventilated swimming pool makes people feel better because it’s a very pleasant and ambient environment.

It’s not just the users of a pool which benefit. Poor air conditioning and bad ventilation can accelerate the deterioration of a building’s structures as well as the fixtures, fittings, and furnishing. Cost is also a major factor as, once construction or refurbishment has been finished, there are energy and maintenance commitments which need to be paid for. Electricity, gas, water, and wastewater are becoming more expensive every year while a venue’s income may remain static or rise at a rate below the level of utility inflation.

Our solution

Prior to the refurbishment of the pool, pupils and staff at Bryanston School reported conditions inside the swimming hall as being stuffy and humid, so much so that some pupils would not enter the pool area at all.

Our challenge was to design and install a system which guaranteed even and predictable air flows and patterns with the ultimate goals of reducing indoor humidity levels and of keeping the glazing in and on the building free of condensation.

Following the installation of our fabric ducting, these issues were solved immediately and to pool users’ satisfaction. There are no longer any draughts for users to put up with and the movement of air through the entire space is even.

The correct movement of air in an environment like a swimming pool requires significant forethought in order to identify challenges and design a solution to fit the particular requirements of the installation. We were contracted to do the work by our partners whose project lead explained the reason behind the selection of Prihoda’s fabric ducting.

“We had worked with Prihoda on other challenging projects and found that their fabric ducting system delivered the results required time after time. Fabric ducting offers many distinct advantages. For installation teams, it’s much easier to work with and quicker to install. For a facility’s users, it works very well in a variety of different heights giving much more uniform air distribution in target areas. For a facility’s owners, the savings achieved in running costs are substantial”.

Prihoda fabric ducts can be removed easily and cleaned thoroughly in a domestic washing machine or customers can opt to take a maintenance contract with Prihoda, so no investment in a commercial washing machine is needed if one is not on-site already. The facilities management teams in the locations where Prihoda fabric ducts have been installed often use the Prihoda Care maintenance service.

Other important factors for both Bryanston school and our partners were our fabric ducting’s worldwide and European flame retardancy certifications (the fabric produces a very low amount of smoke and no flaming droplets at all). Our fabric ducting is very difficult to ignite particularly because of its in-built self-extinguishing properties.

Prihoda fabric is also cleanroom standard ISO4 – the ducting material does not shed any fibres and it confirms to all accepted cleanroom standards.

Air conditioning for pool and sports areas

Traditional air conditioning systems face many challenges when used in high humidity environments with varying air flow areas. Metal ducts are prone to rusting and formation of deposits within their internal structure which could pose an environmental health risk. In addition, the extra maintenance that these installations demand increased operational costs and risk extended downtime of the facility.

Fabric ducted solutions, in comparison, suffer none of these drawbacks. Being composed of resilient materials that are designed from the outset to cope with these types of challenges – they are the perfect choice for environments such as swimming pools, sports halls, commercial kitchens, and humidity sensitive areas.

To speak to our team about the range of fabric ducting materials we offer together with our additional services for end users and for specifiers, please call us on 0121 320 2496 or email info@prihoda.co.uk if you’re in the UK. Our ROI customers should call 01 961 0031 or email info@prihoda.ie.