Background:
A construction company is renovating and upgrading an historical building in the center of Valencia (year 2021), which was built in 1900 with timber and load-bearing walls. This 4-floors building will become a hotel, a new use that will require an increase of the maximum design loads and necessarily the compliance of the minimum floor height. This minimum distance does not allow to install a typical concrete or steel flooring due to their depth. Besides, considering the special status of protection of this cultural heritage building, the timber elements of some of the floors should be integrated as part of the new flooring solution. Finally, there is an additional constrain for these works: The difficulty to access to this building for a truck or a crane, so it would be complex to pump concrete or to install a precast solution.Why to use UHPC?
RDC made the project of the rehabilitation of this building with Formex®, the UHPC from RDC. Here its use is interesting because UHPC can provide the necessary stiffness to a floor using a depth significantly lower than the depth of the traditional solutions. For the floors where only UHPC is used, the depth is limited to 17 cm, while it reaches 23.5 cm for the case of the structures, timber-UHPC, where the last is a compressive layer of 35 mm of thickness. These solutions minimize the weight per square meter of the flooring, avoiding overloads in the historical building and minimizing the timber creep. UHPC provides 40% of its performance after 24 h, so it facilitates the progress of the works and the early removal of the formworks. Besides, provided as premix it can be produced in 250 kg batches in ordinary tilting mixers, avoiding logistic problems and with a minimum infrastructure.
Advantages:
- Only solution viable to accomplish the current building regulations.
- Only solution viable that avoids an overload of the historical buildin.
Achievements:
- First building renovated with in-situ UHPC in Spain (2021).
- Four floors completed in less than 2 weeks.
