Woodberry Down 1B – CLT

Challenge

Installation of 20 Glide-On™ balconies for one of the new apartment buildings at North London’s Woodberry Down.The building had a timber CLT frame construction and there was very limited space on site. A mobile crane was being used for this site given that that main tower crane had been struck, therefore every day which could be saved on the planned week of install meant a direct saving opportunity.

Solution

We designed special first-fix bracketry to suit the apartment building’s CLT timber frame construction. These brackets fixed on to the top of the CLT slab at an angle to maximise pull out resistance from the balcony moment forces. This was tested in-house to ensure structural integrity. Our innovative offsite balcony system enabled all 20 balconies to be delivered and installed in a single day. The install team were able to unload and install 6 balconies in just under an hour, and then continued to install the entire buildings worth of 20 balconies, all in a singled day. This meant they significantly reduced site time and associated costs allowing for other trades to continue in a short amount of time and several thousands of mobile crane cost could be saved from the overall balcony package costs.

Installation process

Step 1: Unique brackets were designed and extensively tested bespoke for CLT slab loading and pull out on our in house test rig and on-site for maximising the performance with the timber slab.

Step 2: Offsite manufacturing enabled us to maintain and execute a high degree of quality control.

Step 3: The balconies were delivered to site via our own lorry trailers ready to be unloaded and installed.

Step 4: All 20 Glide-On™ balconies were installed and our team were finished and left the site within one day. Some of which were installed in just 4 minutes.