Modern Methods of Construction

Hanson MMC Brochure MFX V2
11/7/06
5:22 pm
Page 1
Hanson Building Products

Head Office
Stewartby
Bedford
MK43 9LZ
Tel: 08705 258258
Fax: 01234 762040
Website: www.hanson.biz/uk
Email: mmc@hanson.biz
Modern Methods of Construction
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5:22 pm
Page 3
Combining traditional build

with modern performance
As one of the UKs leading

manufacturers of building products,
Hanson has sought solutions to the
main criticisms against traditional
build - speed, quality and waste
reduction - and has developed its
own unique answers to Modern
Methods of Construction.
A range of innovative systems using Modern Methods of Building Construction
By combining traditional techniques

with modern factory-based processes,
the company has been able to meet
and exceed the exacting requirements
of current and future building
regulations.
At the same time, Hanson has
provided a safer working environment
for the construction of standardised
single storey cavity walls with
regulated work patterns and assured
quality control, unaffected by inclement
weather conditions.
Hanson a single source

solution in prefabricated
building products
With its market-leading position,
Hanson has developed a range of
prefabricated building products that
enable housebuilders and developers
to gain all the advantages of
quicker build times and quality of
workmanship. By using traditional
building materials, the Hanson
product range satisfies the
requirements of end users who,
consistently favour traditionally
built homes.
Contents
Modern Methods
of Construction
4-5
Exterior Walling Systems
6-11
Interior Walling Systems
12-15
Flooring Systems
16-19
Basement Systems
20-21
Staircases
22-23
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Modern Methods of Construction
Aircrete Blocks
Hollowcore Suspended
Flooring System
Wonderwall Panel System
MMC
Off-site manufacturing utilising technically advanced prefabrication
processes for better build quality and efficiency
Omnia
Flooring System
Using the accumulated skill and expertise

gained through its wide-ranging
operations, Hanson is now able to
offer a range of related products. The
Hanson House provides prefabricated
solutions from basement, through ground
and first floors - and including staircases
- to external and internal walls.
Dense Block
Walling
Jetfloor Insulated
Flooring System
In all instances, products have been

developed to take advantage of advanced
prefabrication processes. The products
have been designed and developed
to maximise the benefits of off-site
manufacturing processes in the
controlled environments of purpose-
Concrete Staircase
With mounting emphasis to increase

both the number of houses built and
the efficiency with which they are built,
Modern Methods of Construction have
never been more relevant. Hanson is in
the forefront of leading UK construction
product manufacturers to be offering
innovative solutions that meet the needs
of efficiency and acceptability.
built factories, whilst minimising the

need for on-site involvement that is
subject to the unpredictability of both
the weather and the availability of
skilled labour.
Unlike the prefabricated housing built
during the 20th century, much of which
was designed to be temporary, the focus
of Hansons MMC compliant products is
on quality of materials and workmanship.
In more recent times prefabrication
has been successfully used for the
construction of hospitals, hotels and
schools in the UK as well as for housing
in other countries. This helps to provide
the assurance of building methods and
materials that have been tried and
tested in use. Whilst quicker build times
are the ultimate goal, they are not
achieved at the sacrifice of quality
of design and workmanship.
Hanson MMC products are provided
with the full backing of the companys
technical advisory service.
Basement Twinwall
System
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Exterior Walling System
Wonderwall
Lightweight cladding panel system with high quality clay brick slips
Prefabrication benefits with traditional finish

Hansons Wonderwall cladding
system combines all the advantages
of modern prefabrication with all the
appeal of traditional appearance. It can
be installed faster than traditionally
built masonry to a higher level of quality
and is suitable for use as a durable,
decorative and thermal insulating finish
to external vertical walls. Existing or new
build structures that use masonry, dense
concrete, modular units, timber or metal
frames are all suitable for fixing.
The system comprises a rigid urethane
insulation panel which Hanson prebond to a vacuum-formed brickwork
co-ordinating carrier sheet. The
composite panel is fixed back to the
substructure on site, and brick slips are
fixed to the carrier sheet using a purpose
-made adhesive. A specialist pointing
mortar completes the installation.
such as stretcher, stack, Flemish and

English can be easily achieved.
Brick details such as corbels and dentil
courses can be incorporated by altering
the thickness of the finishes from
15mm to 35mm. External corners,
soldier courses and reveals can be
achieved by the use of L-shaped pistol
slips. Being lightweight, Wonderwall
provides a method of finishing areas
where traditional brickwork cannot be
incorporated, such as staggered gables
or balconies on framed structures.
Hanson House, BRE, Watford
Wonderwall also provides on-site

flexibility to enable shaping to suit
openings and other building details,
whilst minimising wastage.
A wide variety of brick finishes are

available, including extruded and stock
facing slips. Different brick bonds
Greatorex Street, London
Brick slip installation process
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LockClad
Terracota cladding system with high quality clay sigma tiles
A ventilated rainscreen and decorative terracotta faade

The Red Bank LockClad system provides
an external rainscreen faade that is
suitable for most types of construction,
including concrete, timber and steel
framed buildings and can accommodate
curved facades, corners, angles, window
and door openings.
The system comprises of sigma clay
tiles, sigma aluminum support rails and
clips. The primary support structure and
the sigma rails can be fully installed
before tiling commences. Installation
is fast and simple and can be effected
in any direction and sequence.
Each LockClad sigma tile is securely
and independently retained on the
supporting rail by fixing clips, allowing
individual tiles to be removed and
reinstated. LockClad sigma is designed
to be fixed to most substrates - including
masonry, concrete, steel and timber frame

systems and lightweight walling panels.
LockClad sigma is designed to function
as a rear-ventilated, open-jointed
rainscreen cladding. As with most
rainscreens, it allows the insulation to be
located on the outer face of the building
shell. This provides efficient insulation
and reduces the risk of thermal bridging
and condensation problems.
LockClad sigma has been subjected to
rigorous independent testing to establish
its high performance criteria. This
covers all aspects of durability, strength,
water penetration, fire, impact and
maintenance. LockClad is the first
terracotta rainscreen to be awarded a
British Board of Agrment Certificate.
Each tile is securely and independently retained
External rainscreen faade
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Gluedbrickwork
Thin-joint glued brickwork
High compressive, flexural and tensile strengths are achieved

Developed several years ago in Europe,
thin-joint glued brickwork is appropriate
for a wide range of building types, from
domestic construction - particularly
where several dwellings are constructed
on the same site allowing efficient use
of equipment - to large commercial and
civil engineering projects.
The technique relies on joints which are
formed using an adhesive or glue mortar,
that have a high percentage of cement,
very fine inert additives and specially
formulated polymers. The adhesive is
applied by using specially developed
hand-held pumped nozzles that usually
dispense two parallel beads of material
along the horizontal bed joints and on the
perpends prior to the bricks being laid.
Many metres of bed joint adhesive can
be laid in a rapid single operation, with
the nozzle dispensing relatively accurate
quantities of mortar. Working conditions,
speed of construction and overall quality
are generally considered better than
those of traditional mortar.
University of West of England
10
A variety of finishes can be achieved

through the flexibility of brick type and
the scope for creative bond patterns as
a stretcher bond is no longer necessary
for the structural strength of the wall.
The compressive, flexural and tensile
strengths of thin-layer mortars are
higher than that of common mortars.
This leads to an increased bond strength
meaning lintels can often be omitted,
and facilitates the simple use of unreinforced stack bonding. The glue
mortars permeability is less than that
of common mortars. This, together
with the thinness of the joints, tends
to minimise water penetration through
the mortar zone.
Perhaps the greatest potential for
thin-joint glued brickwork lies with
prefabricated panels either in a factory
or at a construction site. Prefabrication
is particularly useful for congested city
centre sites, buildings with rapid
construction programmes and when
there is local bricklayer shortage.
Easy application
Allowing scope for creative bond patterns
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Blockwork
Prefabricated thin joint dense concrete blockwork panels
Ease and speed of working on site

Thin joint adhesive technology, employed
for on-site construction in European
countries for more than a decade, has
now been developed by Hanson to
create fully prefabricated thin joint
dense concrete block panels. Providing
ease and speed of construction on
site, the panels offer the mechanical
advantages of strength, sound
insulation and fire resistance, whilst
minimising wastage. They are suitable
for use on ground and first-floor levels
and because of their weight and high
load bearing capacity, are equally
suited to multi-storey construction.
The strength provided by thin joint
construction enables the panels to be
fully prefabricated in the factory and
transported and installed on site. The
panels consist of a 100mm outer leaf,

a 100mm inner leaf and a 100mm
insulated cavity, and can be used with a
variety of internal and external finishes,
including dry lining systems, plaster,
paint or specialist cladding panels such
as the Hanson Wonderwall System.
Factory manufacture mirrors the manual
blocklaying approach although the
laying rate using a bespoke mortar
applicator can be up to three times
faster than traditional trowel laying
techniques. Prefabrication moves the
wet trade off site and into the controlled
environment of a factory to provide
consistent quality not subject to the
vagaries of the weather and variations
in skill levels.
Installation of prefabricated panel
Purpose made corner panel
Masonry Option
In addition, prefabricated inner leaf dense
blocks can be used in conjunction with
single brick skin masonry which may
be built up on site or as panels in a
factory environment.
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Page 15
Aircrete Blocks
Thin joint lightweight concrete blocks
Saving time and costs in building walls

Thin joint lightweight aircrete blocks
provide a fast, clean and accurate
method of construction that is
designed to lower costs by reducing
the time taken to build walls. By using
Thermalites Thin Joint Mortar and
Aircrete Blocks the depth of mortar can
be reduced from 10mm to 3mm or less.
The application of thin joint mortar to
the blocks is quickly and accurately
achieved by the use of a serrated
scoop, the full benefits being realised
on long runs of wall. Independent
speed trials have indicated that a
wall of Thermalite blocks and thin
joint mortar can be laid twice as fast
as that built with aggregate blocks
and general use mortar. The speed of
construction can be further enhanced
by using Thermalite Large Format
Blocks, which have a face size of
two traditional concrete blocks.
Thin joint mortar sets more rapidly

than traditional mortar and is
typically stable after 60 minutes.
This allows the amount of walling that
can be built to be increased and the
earlier installation of other components
such as floors and roof timbers.
The completion of a weathertight
envelope allows brickwork to be taken
off the critical path and for internal
work, such as service installation,
partitioning and plastering to progress.
This method of construction also
reduces heat loss through mortar
joints to provide improvements in
U-values of up to 10%; improves the
airtightness of the construction; and
reduces wastage on-site by allowing
for the precision cutting of blocks.
Construction in progress
Lightweight blocks for easy handling
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Flooring Systems
Jet floor
The original insulated flooring system
High levels of insulation with reduced construction costs

Another example of Hanson marketleading innovation, Jetfloor Super is the
first composite suspended system for
ground floors incorporating polystyrene
infill blocks to provide high levels of
insulation, achieving U-values as low
as 0.20 W/m2K.
The integrated insulation effectively
reduces the overall floor zone by
obviating the need for sheet insulation
material, thereby reducing construction
heights. In this way, Jetfloor Super
actually reduces construction costs.
Contractors also benefit from the
systems speed and simplicity of use
that makes for rapid and easy installation.
This enables floors to be finished early
in the construction process, allowing for
earlier drying out and faster follow-on
for other trades.
The system consists of standard 150mm
deep inverted T beams at a maximum of
610mm centres, infilled with expanded
polystyrene (EPS) blocks. A grade
25 structural topping with A98 mesh

or polypropylene fibres completes
the system.
The EPS blocks are supplied in lengths
of 550mm to enable rapid coverage of
large floor areas. Services are easily
accommodated by omitting blocks or
trimming them with a fine-toothed saw.
Installation is simple and there is no
requirement for special skills, equipment
or preparation.
Jetfloor Plus is an alternative system
which comprises inverted T beams
infilled with purpose-made EPS blocks,
finished with either a floating 18mm
thick chipboard layer, or 65mm sand/
cement screed.
Jetfloor Super
The thermal performance of both

Jetfloor Super and Jetfloor Plus
can help significantly in meeting
the requirements of Part L of the
Building Regulations.
Rapid and easy installation, no special skills required
16
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Flooring Systems
Hollowcore
For suspended floors with clear spans up to 13 metres
Hanson prestressed hollowcore

units are ideal for all suspended floor
applications, particularly where a clear
spanning durable deck is required. With
clear, unpropped spans of up to 13
metres, they can be used on masonry,
steel or concrete structures, offering
benefits of fast erection and the
provision of an immediate working
platform.
cast into the lower half of the units the number of strands and the degree
of prestressing determining the
ultimate load/span capacity. When
concreted together hollowcore units
can provide diaphragm action without
structural topping. However,
enhanced structural performance is
achieved by using
a composite structural topping.
With excellent sound and fire resistant

properties, the units can be supplied
with preformed service holes and
notches. The Hanson range, now the
most extensive available in the UK,
increases the versatility of the product
enabling flooring solutions to be tailored
to projects. The structural properties
come from the prestressing strands
All units are machine produced ensuring

consistently high quality with the steel
beds producing a smooth regular soffit.
Solid composite flooring units offer the
similar benefits to hollowcore but,
being thinner, enable a wider range of
composite solutions for a given floor
zone. Manufactured to the same factory
standards, they are available 100mm

deep and in widths up to 1200mm.
Unpropped spans can be constructed
up to 5 metres, with propping enabling
greater spans. Full technical advice
is available.
Suspended floor application
Omnia
Wideslab flooring combining pre-cast and in-situ concrete
A direct equivalent to an in-situ slab,

Omnia enables pre-cast and in-situ
concrete to be combined to give major
benefits to specifiers, engineers and
contractors.
Acting as a fully participating formwork,
Omnia is fast to erect saving time and
money. Its exceptional flexibility enables
each panel to be designed to suit a
specific location and load, with irregularly
shaped buildings being easily
accommodated. Service holes and
the like are positioned and formed
during manufacture.
Panels incorporate the Omnia lattice
10
18
girder manufactured from cold drawn

wire. The girder is cut to size and
attached to a lower layer of reinforcement.
Concrete is then poured to create the
precast panel. The lattice girder ensures
a mechanical bond between precast
and in-situ concrete.
formers, perimeter edge formwork or

insulation, or can be manufactured
using lightweight aggregate to provide
weight savings of over 20%.
Standard panels are 2.40 metres wide

(smaller panels can be manufactured to
order) and between 50mm and 75mm
deep. Depending on loadings and overall
slab depth, spans of over 11 metres can
be achieved.
The Omnia Flooring range includes
panels incorporating polystyrene void
Fully participating formwork
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Basement Systems
Twinwall
Twin benefits from a combination of precast and in-situ concrete
A fully flexible walling system with complete design freedom

Using prefabricated panels comprising
two slabs connected by means of castin lattice girders to form a single unit
into which concrete is poured on site,
Hansons Twin Wall is a fully flexible
walling system that combines the
speed and quality of precast concrete
with the structural and waterproof
integrity of a continuously poured in
situ concrete structure.
Without restriction on architectural
layout, the system eliminates the need
for expensive formwork and the waiting
time for the removal of formwork to
provide for fast build, with installation
rates of up to 100m2 per hour.
No edge shutter is required when
pouring upper floor concrete and
plastering to ceiling is not necessary

to achieve a high quality finish.
The panels are machine manufactured
to exacting tolerances and can
incorporate cast-in cable ducts,
electrical boxes and service ports.
They are supplied complete with floor,
window, door and ventilation openings.
Once installed, panels provide superior
sound insulation.
By reducing weight, prefabricated Twin
Wall panels provide savings in both
transport and crane costs.
Full computer design with detailed
installation drawing, calculation and
method statement can be supplied
for each project.
Box Culverts
The UKs largest producer of Box
Culverts, Hanson manufactures a
wide range of precast concrete units
from 1000mm x 600mm to 6000mm
x 3600mm with flat or shaped inverts.
Traditionally used for water transportation,
Box Culverts are exceptionally
versatile and can be used not only for
Crane installation
basements but also for above ground

applications such as garages.
Manufactured in rapid hardening
Portland cement, or combined rapid
hardening Portland cement and pfa,
they meet Class 3 and Class 4 soil
conditions respectively.
Pre-cast concrete unit
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Page 23
Staircases
Staircases
Precast stairs and landings for domestic and commercial projects
Quality-controlled factory production for rapid construction
Individually designed and manufactured,
precast concrete staircases combine
the advantages of quality-controlled
production with rapid construction and
immediate access for follow-on trades.
The Hanson range now includes both
straight flight and winding staircases
in both standard and bespoke
arrangements. Suitable for virtually
any situation in most masonry, concrete
and steel structures, they require
no propping or formwork and are
inherently fire resistant.
Where a standard mould is not suitable,
a comprehensive bespoke design and
manufacturing service is available.
Standard moulds are available for:
short flights with integral top and/

or bottom landings - ideal for locating
round lift shafts
Excellent sound insulation
22
straight flights with cross landings ideal where side support is available
for both main and half landings
flights with integral top and/or bottom

landings - suitable for steel framed
buildings or where fewer crane lifts
are preferred.
Hanson also produces the unique
Uniflight winding staircase, which is
available in both L and U configurations.
Designed to emulate traditional timber
staircases with winders radiating round
the Newell Post, Uniflight offers a
reduced plan area over alternatives,
together with excellent sound insulation
and a high quality ex-mould soffit,
suitable for direct decoration.
Winding staircases can be installed as the
building progresses, providing immediate
and safe access to following floors.
Uniflight staircase in domestic property
Straight flight
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Head Office
Stewartby
Bedford
MK43 9LZ
Tel: 08705 258258
Fax: 01234 762040
Website: www.hanson.biz/uk
Email: mmc@hanson.biz

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Hanson MMC Brochure MFX V2

Hanson Building Products

Hanson Building Products