Concrete Upper Floors
For High Performance
Concrete separating floors are common in multi-occupancy accommodation – flats,
student accommodation and hotels – but the current market share of concrete in
upper floors of housing is in single digits. This low market share is in stark contrast
to the many performance benefits that concrete has to offer. These benefits are
recognised by house builders and more wealthy property owners but concrete
upper floors are currently restricted to the premium end of the house market.
Concrete upper floors provide improved performance:
enhanced fire resistance and acoustic separation, non-squeaky
floors, opportunities for improved thermal comfort and energy
efficiency. They also offer the opportunity for masonry
partitions in upper floors, which in turn provide acoustic and
fire-resistance benefits and opportunities to improve thermal
performance.
Concrete upper floors are sustainable. Performance benefits
and local availability discussed above are both aspects of
sustainability. A third aspect is the whole-life environmental
impact. This aspect warrants a whole article in itself and
readers are referred to The Concrete Centre website for more
information on production of concrete constituents and flooring
products, longevity in-use and end-of-life reuse/recycling.
In brief, the industry has made great strides in reducing
environmental impacts during production. By being durable,
these impacts are spread over many years and at end of life
precast units are crushed to make recycled concrete aggregate.
Concrete upper floors are available. The precast solutions
currently supplied and installed for the majority of ground
floors are suitable for upper floors. These are supplied by UK
manufacturers and typically by local manufacturers. Most
housing developments have a manufacturer within 30 miles.
Manufacturers have the capacity to increase production and
have access to increased volumes of constituents, which are
also locally available.
Concrete upper floors are buildable. It is common practice
to install precast separating upper floors in multi-occupancy
accommodation and precast ground floors in housing. Precast
upper floors are also installed in premium housing. Therefore
it is evident that there is no particular barrier in terms of
buildability. Furthermore, there is an HSE-endorsed code
of practice for the safe installation of flooring(1) to provide
guidance and help CDM compliance when choosing precast
upper floors.
Andrew Minson, Executive Director,
The Concrete Centre
www.concretecentre.com
Concrete upper floors are structurally and architecturally
very straightforward to incorporate into designs. Over 85%
of housing in Great Britain is of masonry construction and this
has the load-bearing capacity to support concrete upper floors.
In some cases a change in inner-leaf block specification may be
required but there are no fundamental adverse knock-on effects
on structure or architecture by choosing concrete flooring
compared with lightweight flooring.
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