Record-Breaking Sports Halls

With the London Olympics expected to raise enthusiasm for sport – both before and after the 2012 Games – off-site building specialist Terrapin Ltd has turned the spotlight on its ‘record-breaking’ factory-built sports hall which provides cost-effective new facilities for indoor sports in a fraction of traditional building time. Using Terrapin’s Unitrex ‘flat pack’ panels on a prefabricated steel framework, double volume sports halls can be ready for the kick-off within weeks – and peripheral rooms such as showering or changing facilities can be pre-assembled and fitted in the factory to save more time on-site. A Terrapin sports hall can also benefit from latest ideas in passive heating.

Sports halls already feature prominently in Terrapin’s off-site building project portfolio, and the company is preparing for fresh interest as the Olympic wave gathers momentum. Managing Director of Terrapin explains how Terrapin sports halls can be designed to accommodate one or more courts and provide facilities for a wide range of indoor sports, keep-fit and other recreational activities, “Once the steel structure is in place, Unitrex panels are delivered to site and craned into position. This makes it possible to complete the walls in record time, with a no-fuss building process that causes minimal disturbance on-site,” he says. “It’s substantially faster than conventional masonry construction, and saves on foundations, mess, noise, site traffic and carbon emissions.”

Unitrex panels are built in the Terrapin factory, where quality is closely monitored to ensure a perfect fit every time. The panels are built from FSC-approved timber, which is sourced in sustainable forests. Terrapin’s portfolio of sports halls built for schools and universities includes examples ranging from around 600 sq m to 1,300 sq m, with average build programmes of 20 weeks.

Sports halls invariably need extra rooms for offices, toilets, changing rooms, catering facilities or storage, and a Terrapin innovation means peripheral rooms for any purpose like these can be fully built and fitted in the factory. Using its expertise in volumetric building for off-site projects, Terrapin can pre-assemble Unitrex panels into road-transportable fitted modules to the same basic grid as the main hall. The modules are then simply positioned on lightweight foundations and attached to the hall or each other to create a fully customised building. Large clear-span rooms can be created by supporting two or more modules on ‘goalpost’ beams, which also minimise the requirement for foundations.

Managing Director of Terrapin says: “This combination of panelised and volumetric construction makes it possible to reduce overall building time even further. Because the modules can be fully finished in the factory, they are simply connected to any electrical, plumbing or other services and are then ready for use. Terrapin sports halls can be clad externally in a choice of materials from masonry to timber, to suit any architectural or budget requirement. With energy efficiency and the cost of heating fuel a concern to many, sports hall specifiers could do well to consider more sustainable heating alternatives. One cost saving possibility, if a hall has a clear southern aspect, is a passive solar collection system which uses a dark metal outer cladding on the entire wall area to heat air in a cavity that is then ducted around the hall. Systems like this can raise temperatures by up to 30oC, even in winter, and may be supplemented after dark by conventional heating systems.