Description: Renovation and change of use of Office block in Neasden, London

Client: Dephna Properties, London

ThermaSkirt Profile: ThermaSkirt BM2 & BM3

Making best use of the space when converting offices or commercial properties into residential living spaces, invariably presents a difficult challenge as window and pillars often interupt the useable floor space.

This was exactly the situation Dephna properties found themselves in, when they decided to refurbish their own office block and convert it into residential apartments.

Nimesh Sachdev, Managing Director of Dephna Group explains the issues;

Visiting the Offsite Construction show at Excel, Nimesh came across the DiscreteHeat stand, where the company was displaying their ThermaSkirt system of skirting board heating.

Nimesh goes on;

A few minutes on the stand, and the company were able to show Nimesh just a few case studies from the more than 50,000 installs, mainly into existing or refurbished properties.

ThermaSkirt is an aluminium radiant panel, disguised to look like a skirting board and available in a range of styles and colours. Available in either a wet central heating version or direct electric, the ThermaSkirt panels are simply cut and clipped to the wall, much like a regular skirting board.

In the wet version, a range of push fit connectors allow corners, doorways and other obstacles to be overcome, and for the warm water to pass through integral channels moulded onto the back of the panel. The heated panels then radiate a continuous perimeter of heat, all around the room at low level, imitating the effect of underfloor heating, but without interference with the floor, and completely unaffected by the final covering.

Eliminating bulky radiators from the remaining walls makes best use of the available space

Dephna’s own installers received a few days training from DiscreteHeat engineers, enabling them to carry out the installation themselves.

Connecting onto a heat interface unit (HIU), each apartment draws the heating from a centralised boiler plant which is metered and billed accordingly. The flow control is via a hidden 2 port valve controlling the flow to the ThermaSkirt system, which in turn is actiavted by a programmable digital thermostat.

Now complete, and being only a stone’s throw from Neasden tube station all apartments are sucessfuly let.

Nimesh concludes;

ThermaSkirt is specified on future Dephna Group projects.