Big Panel Construction- The Story

We think it may be the most exciting thing to happen in the ICF world since Polarwall was launched back in 2002. If you have looked through our website you are probably already aware of the obvious advantages of ICF construction (thermal, security, strength etc) and you also probably know that Polarwall is totally unique amongst its competition with even more advantages (non-modular, uses superior Extruded Polystyrene, build anything with few parts, carpentry skilled, simple skills...etc etc.) Well now on top of all the other advantages and benefits of our unique system comes the ultimate in high speed construction - Large Panel Construction (and when we say "large" we dont mean a bit oversized - we mean huge panels of 2.4m wide and up to 3 m high! Furthermore, we can gang-form these huge panels together to make GIGANTIC panels and form whole walls in one go! Obviously, these large panels need a crane on site to lift and move them, so this is not suited to single to one-off structures The large panels came about when we had to do some elaborate curved walls so we had the idea to build them in large pre-made panels. We then developed a simple but very effective way of joining them together on site. The jointing method also allows for sizing adjustments to be made to the finished wall so panels dont need to be cut or added to in any way! Our first thoughts were that this would be ideal for offsite construction, but the more we thought about it the more we started to think in very different terms. This is "simple-to-assemble" and needs only a couple of simple jigs, so we thought, let us avoid all the common Offsite issues (logistics, shipping costs, quality issues, wrong sized, factory delays, etc) and build it in an Offsite manner but Onsite? It was very logical and total control remains on site and not in a factory hundreds of miles away! The jigs could easily be set up onsite or in a temporary location near to siteso we came up with the obvious name of "Onsite/Offsite Construction" but that didn't give the whole picture of what this is ... then we came up with the name of "The Floating Factory" which better describes the whole concept ... The Floating Factory Having a factory right next to, or on the actual building site, has huge shipping and logistic advantages, but it also means that the site management stay totally in control of the production of units, rather than some remote factory manager in another part of the country (or even abroad). Also, by including onsite concrete batching and onsite concrete pump then the control is complete and construction costs tumble further. The assembly is completed using less-skilled labour who are quickly trained in how to build the panels. Then, a team of operatives (usually with carpentry skills) are used to position and fix the panels to each other prior to the concrete pour. Panels can be gang-formed to build complete walls Its fast and its efficient and opens up a whole new world of construction possibilities ....

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