Manchester – The (One) Way

Staffordshire based Alsecco (UK) Ltd is bringing innovation to Manchester’s The Way project with its revolutionary One-Way® render application system.

The project, on the East Beswick area of Manchester, is part of a whole redevelopment and regeneration of the area which includes Sport City, close to Manchester City’s football ground. In this first phase alone, 550 out of a total 1600 dwellings are being built, a mixture of social, affordable and private residences. Particularly interesting from a construction perspective is the fact that the houses are being built using SIPS (structurally insulated panels), a modern method of construction utilising Kingspan’s TEK system. Boards which make up complete walls are delivered to site as panels then slotted onto concrete rafts by crane and grooved into shredded timbers. Indeed, the whole substructure of the building is manufactured from SIPS and The Way is the biggest site in Europe currently using this system.

Alsecco’s Flexewall Quattro was selected as an external render on the dwellings after the company submitted numerous samples and technical performance data, satisfying the weatherproofing and decorative requirements of the specification. Apart from having a high degree of crack resistance and reinforcement from glass fibre mesh, Flexewall Quattro is expediting the rate of completions via a highly innovative application system. Alsecco One-Way® provides a sustainable means of applying render extremely quickly and accurately by spraying from a portable container. Instead of being applied with a hawk and trowel, render is sprayed on then levelled out, dispensed by a nozzle attached to a pump from the container that stretches up to 50 metres. The render is housed in a specially engineered cardboard box containing a special liner with an outlet valve, not dissimilar to a wine box. Each container holds the equivalent of 40 buckets of render, and therefore saves considerable time and accident risk on site. Once used, the empty box can be crushed and taken to the nearest recycling centre.

“The health & safety benefits are numerous, let alone the cost benefits”, says Tony Masters, Operations Director with Alsecco (UK). “The number of accidents attributable to manual handling and trips is enormous, and the One-Way® system means that site workers no longer have to constantly ascend and descend ladders to replenish a bucket”. Perhaps the most incredible aspect of Alsecco One-Way® material is that it costs the same as traditional materials. The benefits go on, though; since Flexewall Quattro and the top coat, Alsecco Orgatect are acrylics, nozzles need simply be left in water overnight before being used next day, negating the need for lengthy clean-downs and clean-outs associated with traditional materials.

One-Way® is quite simply a revolution in the distribution and application of liquid products, and its success has spurred Alsecco into another major product development programme which should yield yet more innovative systems in 2006.