Excitement Builds as New Frenchay Primary School Nears Completion

As staff and students looked forward to the summer holidays, a group from Frenchay Church of England Primary School visited the site of their brand-new facilities in the UK to take a last peek before building work was completed over the break. And they moved in at the start of the new school year at the beginning of September.

The school is a new build and enlargement on part of the site of the former Frenchay Hospital. It will have state-of-the art facilities and, as temperature records have tumbled recently, the visitors were particularly keen to see and learn about the environmental performance of their new building, designed to Passivhaus standards of environmental performance — meaning they will have a very-low carbon impact on the environment.

Designed and project managed by the council, the new £11-million Frenchay CofE Primary School is the first Passivhaus school in South Gloucestershire.

Building work began in June 2021 and the construction will deliver new energy-efficient, low-impact facilities. Key features of the design include high levels of insulation, triple glazing, low-energy LED lighting, heating provided by air-source heat pumps and recycling of heat through a mechanical ventilation and heat recovery system, which also ensures good air quality throughout the school.

When complete, the school will use electricity only, require no fossil fuel consumption onsite and generate its own zero-carbon energy through photovoltaic solar panels on the roof, with any surplus energy feeding into the national grid.

This facility will provide accommodation for a larger number of pupils than the current school with capacity for 420 pupils to respond to increased demand in the area.

The general contractor for the project is BAM Construct UK Ltd.