SASFA supplement May 2017

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It took a short while for the market to realise just how flexible light steel frame building (LSFB) is as a building method. Ten years ago when SASFA brought LSFB to South Africa, the market’s mind-set was that it was for simple, single storey residential buildings. Today the plethora of different projects in various sectors have demon- strated its versatility and flexibility. ULTIMATE FLEXIBLE BUILDING METHOD

FROM FAST FOOD OUTLETS TO WAREHOUSES,

OFFICES AND FACTORIES …

The Dabmar manufacturing plant in Dundee, KZN is an excellent example. It amply demonstrates the diversity – in this case a high- end office block in tandem with a factory – of light steel frame (LSF) building and cladding. Factory Thecontractor’s (Shospec) scopeofworkson the factory included the exterior wall cladding comprising 90 mm LSF C-sections bracketed to structural girts on the main steel structure. The walls were then cladded with 200 mm pre-painted fibre cement shiplap planks over 18 mm tongue and groove OSB board and Tyvek Membrane. The internal cladding was 15 mm Firestop Gypsum board with 102 mm cavity batt insulation in the wall cavity. The total cladded wall area was approximately 1 300 m 2 . Shospec’s Björn Kähler says that the 10 m-high factory walls with pre-painted Shiplap cladding was an unusual product for an industrial building, selected to achieve the clients brief for a ‘softer finish’and energy efficient wall as opposed to the norm of brick and IBR cladding.

SASFA SUPPLEMENT 2017