Vol. 50, Issue 1 • Residential
UltraBond Floor System speeds up Apartment Building Construction
A composite floor system shortened construction time by three months and cut material costs, for an 11-storey, 166-condo unit apartment building in Longueuil Quebec. The system, called UltraBond, comes in cold-form sheets 609.6mm (24 inches) wide, 203mm (8”) high and precut in lengths up to 10.06m (33 ft.), according to Simon Pawsey, technical sales representative with the Steelform Group of Companies.
Once assembled into floor decking and with rebar placed in the deep V-grooves, concrete is poured on the Ultra-Bond, creating a lightweight composite floor 292mm (11.5”) thick. Once finished, it has a two-hour fire rating. Pawsey checks off some of the advantages of this construction technique:
“UltraBond significantly reduced weight on the structure
compared to a conventional slab. It reduced shoring to one
row. Cost savings were a big factor, with one-third of the rebar
and 50 percent less concrete than a nine-inch slab. It saved the
general contractor about three months of construction time.”
The UltraBond used in the structure, including the balconies,
was 1.22mm (.048”) Z275 (G90) galvanized steel. The contractor
used 13,066m2 (140,000 sq. ft.) of UltraBond deck, weighing
about 226,796 Kg (500,000 pounds). Because of the lighter
weight, less shoring is required.
Axcès Saint-Charles in Longueuil, Québec, built with the UltraBond composite floor system and light steel framing. Rebar creates reinforced beams in the UltraBond composite floors, using 22mm (.048”) Z275 (G90) galvanized steel.
