All in the detail
As part of the construction of three blocks of five and six-storey high residential apartments at Gillender Street in Bow, East London, Ardmore Construction of Enfield was commissioned to design and manufacture 108 steel cantilever balconies.
The floor of each balcony needed to be constructed in timber decking. The decking specified, however, required the steel supports to be at just 300mm centres, and this would have added significantly to the cost of fabricating each balcony.
Darren Fraser of Ardmore Construction began looking into alternative decking boards, in the hope that he could significantly increase the span width and thus reduce the steel content in the balcony. The design manager on the site team suggested Marley decking. Having used Marley's high-quality boards on a previous contract, the design manager was confident that Marley could provide a solution. After contacting Marley and acquiring the technical data, Darren Fraser found that by using Marley grade C24 145×34 treated decking boards, he could open the support centres from 300mm to 640mm. This enabled him to implement his value engineering proposal. In total, some 12,000 metres (supplied in 4.2m lengths) of 145mm x 34mm thick Marley Standard castellated timber decking was supplied and installed on the 108 balconies.
