Permaban Floor Solutions has completed a project for real estate company Giffels Management Russia on a 600,000 sq m distribution centre near Moscow.
Giffels is focused on the warehousing and logistics sector within Russia and is in the process of developing an industrial real estate portfolio.
Permaban, working alongside main contractor Megastroy and Russian flooring contractor Romex, was briefed to provide a high durability floor with a professional appearance that required minimal maintenance.
The company supplied 3,500m of its AlphaJoint Formwork system, complete with joint intersections, 305 tonnes of its FibreTop Natural Grey Floor Hardener and 6,200 litres of Permaseal cure/seal product for the first area of 65,000 sq m.
The Permaban/Romex team used large area casting techniques, the Somero SXP Laser Screed and Somero Topping Spreader to achieve an FM1 flatness tolerance on bay sizes of 24m wide between columns and 48m long bays.
Each pour was contained inside Permaban’s AlphaJoint leave-in-place formwork system, which was fixed using AlphaFix.
The floor was designed as a 200mm- thick nominally reinforced floor with locally produced square panelled mesh reinforcement, incorporating wire at 150mm centres in both directions to provide the equivalent of a BS A193 mesh.
To aid the tolerance achievement, Permaban decided to place the concrete from the back of the truck rather than pump the concrete, which would have required a modified, less simple concrete mix design.
The mesh was initially laid on to the slip membrane, which allowed the trucks to reverse into position to place their load. Just before the concrete was placed the mesh was set up on spacers to provide 50mm bottom cover.
By using AlphaJoint with AlphaFix the bay closing form work did not have to be placed until the laser screed was on its penultimate pour for the bay, as it can be installed and micro adjusted for line and level.
This allowed the concrete truck to back down directly to the position of placement without having to turn on the reinforcement and slip membrane, helping to prevent rucking of the slip membrane and rutting of the sub base.
As the concrete was being placed level checks were consistently carried out to ensure the levelled concrete and the formwork at the edge.
The surface was then skip floated and straight edged following the levelling by the Somero SXP Laser Screed.
Before and during the power floating and power towelling operations, further straight edging and level checking was done, both within the general floor area and across the joints.
Permaban says there were initially considerable problems with the concrete slump consistency and delays between concrete trucks arriving on site, which resulted in the first day’s pour taking some 15 hours to place.
However, measurement readings after the first day demonstrated that category FM1 properties II and IV had been achieved with only two per cent of the measurement falling above the 95 per cent requirement, and without any grinding.
