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Case Histories
ROBBENS ENSURES COMFORT AT ALL
LEVELS FOR
HOME CREATED IN LUTYENS WATER TOWER
Diogenes of Ancient Greece was famous for living in
a barrel. The Del Tufos of Kent have achieved television fame for
living in a water tower.
Storing precious fluid may have been the original
function of both homes. It's the only point of similarity. Bruno Del
Tufo and his wife Denise enjoy all the comforts of the 21st Century
including a Robbens underfloor heating system.
There was a time when the Del Tufos lived in a
pleasant, but ordinary house in the Kent village of Rolvenden . The
only unusual feature was a square concrete water tower at the bottom
of the garden.
A chance visit by Dr Barry Barton of the
Institution of Civil Engineers - and an authority on water towers -
revealed that this was no ordinary tower. It had been designed by
the great Edwardian architect Sir Edward Lutyens to serve a local
manor house.
The torch was lit that would guide the Del Tufos
through a two year adventure in which they turned the abandoned
tower into a modern home.
Planning permission hinged on achieving an
integrated design using only quality materials - and this philosophy
has shaped the entire project.
The result - as featured on Channel 4's Grand
Designs - is a four storey, three-bedroom house of metal, glass
that seems to float in its grassy hillside setting.
Varying needs
Robbens underfloor heating systems have been
designed to match the varying needs of each floor, from the tiled
entrance hall and utility rooms on the ground floor beneath the
tower legs to the master bedroom under the new steeply pitched
Lutyens' style roof.
The first floor living area, with open plan dining
room, kitchen and sitting room, has been created within a large
steel framed extension, offering spectacular views over the Kent
countryside. A suspended floor construction has been used. The
spaces between the joists were first filled with insulation material
to prevent downward heat transfer. The loops of Robbens AL/PEX
composite aluminium and p-EX pipework could then be clipped in
position below the special heat-conducting aluminium sheets. Loop
ends were connected, via manifolds, to the flow and return sides of
the oil-fired boiler in the ground floor utility room.
Above, inside the original 20,000 gallon concrete
"tank", the guest bedrooms feature a solid floor construction, with
a layer of insulation material above the original 1915 concrete. The
loops of Robbens multi-layer pipework with aluminium oxygen
diffusion barrier are integrated into the floor structure by a final
sand and cement screed ( see
www.underfloorheating.co.uk).
Seasoned oak boards have been used for the floors
almost everywhere in the Water Tower -14mm thick on the upper floors
and 21mm in the living area. Robbens designers took particular care
to match the needs of these natural materials with the heating
requirements - ensuring that floor temperature should never exceed
27 o C.
Manifolds are discreetly located in cupboards in
the master bedroom, the dining area and adjacent to the boiler. For
control purposes the system is divided into zones - dining room,
sitting room, individual bedrooms and two for the kitchen each
with an individual room thermostat.
For the Del Tufos all the planning and two years
spent in a caravan have been well worth while - not least for the
feeling of total comfort that waits behind the front door on a
winter's night.
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