Heating Helps Keep a Newbuild Basement Free Of Water Ingress

Project Overview

Spitfire Homes are an award-winning homebuilder with a design-led approach that ensures new homes are both beautiful and practical in equal parts. In July 2023, Spitfire Homes were tackling the construction of a high-value, newbuild home in Birmingham.

Challenge

One of the earlier stages of construction involved basement works. The basement measured 585m volume and laid the foundation for achieving completion and handover by the end of the year.

As the newbuild project was in the early stages, the house did not yet have a roof. This meant that when rainfall arrived unexpectedly, the basement works currently underway had to pause due to flooding, with drying of wet trades facing potential delay.

Once the flood water was cleared, the basement needed to be sufficiently dried out before the project could progress onto the next stage. Once the basement was sealed and the risk of additional water ingress was low, the drying out process could start.

Due to the size of the basement, Spitfire Homes needed an effective climate solution that would warm and circulate air sufficiently whilst removing moisture from the air whilst keeping them on-track for the end-of-year deadline. They reached out to RVT Group via a Trade Hire Desk Partner to carry out a thorough site assessment and make a recommendation that worked for them.

Solution

RVT Group recommended a bespoke solution including a 65kW CLIMEX^® Indirect Oil-Fired Heater which constantly heated large volumes of fresh air and was then forced into a building via ducting. These units continuously displace the damp air in the building with fresh warm dry air, thereby achieving regular air change through positive pressure.

The heater was paired with 3 warm air distribution kits to ensure the heated air was circulated across the entire basement and 3 CLIMEX® Dehumidifier 96 Litres removed the significant levels of moisture from the air.

RVT Group also supplied products to support the lack of power during the early construction phases. This included a generator, a bunded fuel tank, distribution boards and several other ancillaries. By trusting RVT Group with their drying-out requirements, Spitfire Homes could rest assured that all angles of their challenge were covered and their project was able to continue with minimal disruption to timelines and maintenance of the integrity of completed work.