Permaban’s Formwork System Receives Top Results in Finland

Press Release date: 11th November 2009

Permaban have been at the forefront of floor design, installation, product manufacture, floor repair maintenance and aftercare for over 25 years.  Since being founded in 1983, Permaban have become a leading supplier in the UK, Europe and Middle East along with new presence in Asia.  The product range offers quality solutions for 'leave-in-place' joint systems, dry-shake floor toppings and concrete curing.

Permaban's partner for Finland, Martti Matsinen, Managing Director of PiiMat Oy explains the installation process of Permaban's AlphaJoint system at a site in Vantaa, Finland.The site is a Kesko food warehouse located in Vantaa, Finland.  Kesko are a Finnish Wholesaler who have subsidiaries in other countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Russia.  Within the Finnish market, Kesko focus on groceries, DIY, interior products, consumer durables and car sales.

During September 2009 Kesko extended its warehouse in Vantaa by building a 4,000sqm floor for their Fresh Goods Stock area.

The customer and flooring contractor had specific requirements for the warehouse floor extension, these were:

• Finished floor to be of high durability, require minimum maintenance and to include a formwork system providing joint arris protection and load transfer.
• The finished floor will need to be hygienic as the completed floor will be a stock area for fresh goods.
• The wear resistance of the floor had to be excellent due to heavy fork lift traffic twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

The original design of the floor was for a 210mm thick slab with traditional reinforcement and saw cut joints.  Working closely with the design engineers PiiMat redesigned the slab to reduce the thickness to 190mm and as a jointless floor.  This was achieved using steel fibres and a top quality leave-in-place jointing system from Permaban.  PiiMat recommended Permaban's AlphaJoint GD8 180mm leave-in-place formwork which provided armoured joint protection of 10mm at the joint arris and load transfer to support the movement of loads by fork lift from the existing to new warehouse slab (please view image 1).

 "Concrete Floor slabs in heavy duty internal situations, like the Kesko warehouse in Finland require joints that provide both protection of arris edges of free contraction joints and the accommodation of lateral movement in two planes between bays.  To achieve an excellent finished slab, this requires attention to detail in the planning of the sub-base tolerances, good consistent concrete supply rates and precision leave-in-place formwork, such as AlphaJoint, which is properly supported" explains Martti.

The customer and flooring contractor were very pleased with the outcome and final result of the finished floor at the extended floor area of the Kesko warehouse.  A jointless steel fibre reinforced concrete floor with excellent arris protection, load transfer and excellent wear resistance was achieved on the finished floor (please view image 3).