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Floor slabs

Izodom offers its own lightweight and well insulating floor slab solutions

Any type of floor slab can be made on the Izodom load-bearing walls. Thick, concrete load-bearing wall can withstand the load of even very heavy solutions, such as prefabricated floor slabs, beam and block floors, or floor slabs cast on site. Recently however, these labour-intensive and heavy solutions have been gradually replaced by lightweight, easy and quick technologies which ensure required sound and thermal insulation.

Izodom offers its own lightweight and well insulating floor slab solutions. The floor slab forms are placed in rows on strip formworks, with special holes between rows spaced every 75 cm. These holes are the locations in which the main reinforcement of the floor beams is put. Such reinforcement can be ordered at Izodom - it is a set of trusses prefabricated from steel rebars of the length selected according to a given design. The floor slab reinforcement is usually a 20x25 cm welded wire mesh made of 5 or 6 mm dia wire placed on top of the floor forms. Such mesh can be bought at most local construction supermarkets.

Such prepared formwork is filled with concrete to the height of 5 cm (or more, according to the design) above the floor forms level. The result is a beam-and-slab floor: a few-centimetre thick slab supported by reinforced concrete beams.
The load-bearing capacity of such structure is always calculated by the designer. When the loads exceed 150 kN/m2, the floor load-bearing capacity can be augmented by using higher concrete grade, increasing the beam height or increasing the beam reinforcement.
Regardless of the external insulation layer thickness, all wall system elements include the MP form - "floor support element". This element has only the external form wall and is used to maintain the thermal insulation continuity and to support the floor slab structure on the concrete load-bearing wall. The MP elements facilitate placement of the tie beam reinforcement before concreting the floor slab. An additional advantage of this solution is that the floor slab and the walls are a monolithic structure, and the thermal insulation is not weaker in the floor slab plane.
The floor slabs with span exceeding 5.50 m require 5-cm extra elements which increase the height of load-bearing beams and consequently the total floor slab height.
Izodom floor slab before concreting. Rows of forms with prefab trusses between them. The welded wire mesh reinforcing the slab is not placed yet.
Floor slab after concreting. Note the MP locks on the edges ready to be connected with the wall elements of the next storey. The installations extend from the floor slab - in the locations where the walls of the nest storey will be erected.
There are a few methods of finishing the Izodom floor slabs. The most popular is application of wet gypsum plasters or plasterboards. The plasterboards should be glued to the floor elements and screws should be used which are anchored before concreting in wooden beams placed in the bottom part of the beams.
When building houses in the Izodom technology, you can use any floor slab solution.
The wooden floor elements require a damp proofing membrane in the area of contact with concrete. [The picture shows a flat roof and habitable attic with under-floor heating – Milan, Italy, 2009.
Traditional floors cast on the site are heavy and require a lot of shoring and are very labour-intensive (Bulgaria):
Prefabricated floor slabs are installed quickly, but require a crane (Morocco).