The innovative Durisol wall forming system has cut construction time and costs of a new bottling plant for locally sourced spring water in the Lancashire village of Bolton-by-Bowland. Using Durisol’s unique ‘dry stack, no skills’ system to build external walls of the single storey facility has proved 75% faster - and a quarter of the cost - of traditional brick and block masonry construction according to the project developer, Bolton Hall Ltd.

Nick Brigstocke, CEO of Bolton Hall, believes that without Durisol’s cost-effective building solution he wouldn’t have been able to realise the project financially. He says: “External walls of the 1,265m2 bottling plant took just six days to complete with Durisol, compared with over three weeks if we’d used conventional masonry methods - that’s an impressive saving in time and labour on site.”

Durisol modular units feature an innovative tongue and grooved locating profile which assists alignment and enables quick and easy wall forming on site. Units are simply dry-stacked without mortar and then filled with concrete to create solid walls with excellent sound and thermal insulation, and with minimum time (or skill) on site. “Thanks to Durisol’s fast build system, I reckon we’ve saved around £60,000 on this project,” comments Nick Brigstocke. “We’ll definitely be using Durisol on all our future developments, starting with a new well house to be built as part of this project at the natural spring’s borehole head about a mile away from the bottling facility.”

The bottling plant is on the Bolton Hall Estate where a natural spring was discovered by Henry VI over 600 years ago. The project has utilised an old steel-framed agricultural building and specified Durisol 300mm units for new external walls as required and thinner 250mm units to build up and match existing brickwork. Once up and running, the plant will have a production capacity of up to six million bottles a year and will supply the water - aptly branded ‘King Henry VI Spring Water’ - for fine dining establishments and also the Royal households, having already received the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain’s Office Approval.

Durisol modular wall form units are manufactured from at least 80% recycled waste softwood, bonded with a proprietary cement/PFA (Pulverised Fuel Ash) mix. In addition to their own low carbon footprint and low embedded energy, units come with mineral fibre insulation as standard - a green insulation material - to allow a standard U-value of 0.19 without additional insulation.

Ideal for internal and external walls, Durisol units form an excellent acoustic barrier and offer a minimum acoustic rating of 55dB up to 63dB depending on unit thickness. They can be easily cut, nailed and screwed with standard carpentry tools, and interior and exterior finishes can be applied directly to Durisol with no need for mesh, scratch coats or strapping. Durisol is equally suited to above or below ground level construction and units will not rot or decay. They are resistant to damage from vermin and wood boring insects and do not support fungal or bacterial growth.