The manufacture and delivery of both steel and concrete windposts has a significant carbon footprint and once delivered to site, their storage requires large areas to be set aside.
The properties of steel windposts have inherent fire integrity, acoustic, air tightness and thermal movement issues, all of which require additional measures to achieve specification compliance at extra cost.
Using alternative design methods such as advanced yield line analysis, the specification of wind posts within masonry wall panels can often be optimised and often omitted.
This new technique maximises masonry wall strength without thickening the wall or harming its appearance and allows the architects to design and create uninterrupted blockwork panels with flexible detailing options, whilst retaining the performance characteristics of traditional masonry such as fire integrity, acoustic performance and air permeability.
This modular approach also provides the adaptability for contractors to make late changes to construction without affecting the build programme and creates seamless walls which do not require any fire protection.