Tyefield Place

McCarthy & Stone specialise in premium apartments in idyllic locations, encouraging residents sixty and over to maintain active and independent lifestyles. Tyefield Place, their latest Retirement Living development, is situated in the heart of Hadleigh near the high street. The development consists of thirty-five one and two bedroom apartments with easy access to beautiful walks through the surrounding meadowland and stunning views across River Brett.

Keystones eye catching brick slip segmental arch lintel spans over 5000mm across the main entrance, and another impressive ninety-nine lightweight segmental arch headers are used for the ground and first floor window openings.

Challenge

FB Architecture plans specified Newington Blend brick arches across window openings to match the stock facing brickwork. The first floor room, above the main entrance, required a single brick slip feature segmental arch across three separate window openings. The width of the room was 6500mm and each window opening spanned 1023mm. The lintel design needed to incorporate the architectural design whilst providing the necessary structural support.

Solution

Keystones technical team designed a bespoke brick slip segmental arch feature lintel with a 5652mm external brick opening span and 300mm rise suited to a 150mm cavity wall. Newington Blend bricks were collected from site, then cut and bonded in a 2:1 and 1:2 brick pattern onto the face of the load bearing lintel offsite using a BBA approved high performance adhesive in a weatherproof controlled environment. This negated the need for skilled labour onsite to achieve the decorative brick pattern at a raised height in different weather conditions for a prolonged period of time, which helped to minimise delays that could impact the build schedule.

The segmental arch required two 80mm x 80mm x 5mm square hollow section posts each positioned 2093mm from the edge of the room within the cavity to provide further structural support. Two lifting eyes were welded on to the lintel to prevent potential damage when moving and positioning the sizeable 545kg arch during delivery and installation phases.

Lightweight segmental arch headers were used for a variety of window openings, spanning between 910mm to 1473mm with a 75mm rise, in conjunction with Porotherm lintels facilitating a faster build schedule.