Drywall Solutions for education

MUSIC ROOMS

Challenge - Sound insulation

Teachers and students can fear making excessive noise to adjacent classrooms. Designing a well-insulated musicroom with drylining is easy.

Siniat Solution

Siniat's drywall partitions can meet even the most onerus sound insulation requirements. See page 54 of the Drylining Specification Guide for Education for systems that achieve Rw > 60dB.

Challenge - Excessive sound transfer

Best practice detailing can ensure that the installation and meets on-site testing standards.

Siniat Solution

Siniat have over 30 years of experience in acoustic detailing. Our best practice details can be found in section 4.4 of the Drylining Specification Guide for Education as there are multiple choices.

ASSEMBLY HALLS:

Challenge - Height

The large spaces required by the wide range of activities that occur in school halls can often lead to very high walls, sometimes surpassing 9m tall.

Siniat Solution

Siniat’s standard drywall partitions can reach up to 9.5m and bespoke solutions can reach up to 12m.

Challenge - Durability

A school halls need for multifunctionality poses issues of durability – when used as a PE environment the surrounding walls must be able to resist impacts from balls and bodies alike.

Siniat Solution

Severe duty is recommended for school environments. All Siniat partitions found in section 4 have been classified to be Severe Duty by BS 5234-2: 1992.

Challenge - Sound clarity

Assembly halls typically host a variety of activities, including: assemblies and recitals, where sound clarity is crucial, to PE, where sound clarity is much less important to teachers and students. A well designed school will consider the reverberation requirement for even the most onerous scenario.

Siniat Solution

Siniat offers a range of sound absorbent plasterboard to overcome reverberation.

CLASSROOMS

Challenge - Speech Clarity

Speech clarity is imperative in a classroom environment and is heavily linked to concentration and learning. This speech clarity is reached by controlling reverberation with the use of absorptive materials.

Siniat Solution

Pregybel can provide all of the required absorption within a room to ensure that speech is crystal clear as well as provided an aesthetic, inspirational finish.

Challenge - Flexible layouts

Partitions can provide amazing levels of sound reduction to allow very flexible school layouts.

Siniat Solution

Our Siniat Technical team have vast experience in supporting bespoke detailing

Challenge - Thermal comfort

Meeting the thermal regulations of schools can be difficult with traditional construction, but the temperature of a classroom does impact the ability of students to focus.

Siniat Solution

Weather Defence external sheathing board can meet airtightness requirements as tight as: 1.5m3(Hr.m2).

ATRIAS

Challenge - Sound Insulation

Excited pupils eating lunch or chatting whilst switching classrooms between lessons can cause what's known as the ‘Lombard effect’ – where individuals keep raising their voices to make themselves heard.

Siniat Solution

The use of Pregybel ( a perforated plasterboard) located high on the ceiling and/or at height around the atrium will absorb excessive noise – ensuring that the children are not fighting to be heard– and provide an aesthetic appeal.

Challenge - Fire Protection

Atriums offer an inspiring circulation space, often doubling as assemblies or canteens. Structural columns will intersperse these spaces, needing attractive, simple to install encasement for fire protection.

Siniat Solution

Plasterboard can quickly, cheaply and effectively solve both of these problems. Siniat have a table of Encasement Systems on page 88 of the Drylining Specification Guide for Education.

Challenge - Scale of installation/Construction deadlines

School construction deadlines are often very tight. For large areas of space the choice of drylining products and systems can provide significant time savings.

Siniat Solution

Megadeco a pre-sealed performance board provides the fire/acoustic/durability requirements for atria, but its unique facer takes a stage out of the decorating process.

SEN ROOMS

Challenge - Sound Insulation

It is crucial to ensure that the correct level of sound insulation in surrounding walls has been met to ensure that the teaching space is suitable.

Siniat Solution

Siniat have created an easy-to-read summary of all potential room adjacencies to an SEN room along with drywall system solutions required ( Page 43 of the ‘Drylining Specification Guide for Education’).

Challenge - Fixtures/pull-out resistance

Fixtures/pull-out resistance: The use of interactive devices is becoming more popular and is especially important for engaging students in SEN teaching spaces. Wall-mounted devices need to be safely installed with on a substrate with effective pull out/pull down resistance.

Siniat Solution

Fixtures can be attached directly to the finished drylining using the recommended fixings given in the table below;

CHANGING ROOMS/TOILETS

Water damage

Changing rooms and toilets can prove difficult areas to maintain as high levels of humidity and occasional splashing can cause mould growth or more significant board damage.

Siniat Solution

In addition to great fixture resistance, LaDura is also H1 moisture resistant, resisting low levels of humidity and light splashing. For high humidity applications (eg. wet rooms, swimming pools), use Aqua Board.

Challenge - Fixtures/pull-out resistance

Medium weight fixtures such as urinals and hand dryers are typically suspended from walls in these areas. If not suitably supported, they pose a potential hazard.

Siniat Solution

Gypsum plasterboards can provide the necessary pull out/pull down resistances. See table below.

CORRIDORS:

Challenge - Footfall

Corridors see more footfall than any other area in a school – the bustling environment must be able to resist impacts from students as well as crowd pressure loads.

Siniat Solution

Siniat LaDura board is perfect for this environment providing Severe Duty to partitions only 95mm thick. It is also extremely dense which resists the transfer of sound to classrooms.

Challenge - Safety

Corridors often contain student lockers. It is best practice to fix these lockers back to a substrate to avoid the risk of toppling.

Siniat Solution

Siniat has considered a wide range of fixings into multiple types of plasterboard.