First Street, Manchester SFS involved in the £500m regeneration project of the southern gateway to Manchester City Centre

Situation

Boasting a prime location within the regenerated southern gateway to the city, First Street North is a flagship £500m creative and commercial development in Manchester. The four-star 11-storey Innside hotel, which is part of the internationally recognised Melia chain, is the first of its kind in the UK.

isoweld® is an innovative induction welding system for the attachment of single ply membranes. Suitable for both PVC and TPO membranes, the isoweld® system uses heat induction to weld the membrane to a specially coated metal stress plate located underneath the membrane which is mechanically fastened to the substrate; a sophisticated field fix solution which allows for higher wind loads and offers economic installation costs.

By using the isoweld® system with runs of 20 magnets, this significantly reduced the application time required at the Manchester site. Combining this with a requirement for only three FI-R-20 sleeves and three TIA-T25 fasteners per square meter on the complete installation, certainly made order procurement and site management much easier and helped to significantly reduce costs for the project.

With the North West region being renowned for mixed weather conditions, mechanical fastening is a stronger, safer method for fixing single ply roofs and is unaffected by most of the site issues that traditional adhesive membrane applications face.

The isoweld® 3000 tool also features a very useful "search and control" function, which allows you to identify whether the inductor is correctly positioned over the stress plate. This means we can ensure absolute accuracy, because the welding will only begin when the tool is correctly in place.