Dziwnówek
Building in Dziwnówek — precast walls
A building in the seaside village of Dziwnówek, next to existing apartment blocks, erected in precast concrete. The structure rests on loadbearing walls with the lintels cast in and with provision made for the services. Erection was carried out on a tight site with no room for storage — the walls went onto the hook straight from the trailer.
The coastal belt is an aggressive environment for concrete, and it is not only a matter of storms. Chlorides carried in off the sea are permanently present in the air; they settle on façades and penetrate the concrete together with moisture. When they reach the reinforcement, the steel begins to corrode, and the products of corrosion take up more volume than the steel they formed from — so they burst the cover from within. The result is spalling and rust staining on façades, visible on many coastal buildings from the years when less thought was given to durability.
- Year of completion:
- 2024
- Use:
- Multi-family buildings
- Location:
- Dziwnówek
Scope of work
Resistance to this depends on two things: the density of the concrete and the thickness of the cover protecting the reinforcement. Both are a matter of workmanship. Concrete of the right mix design, well compacted and properly cured, admits moisture far more slowly; cover held as designed gives the chlorides a longer path to travel.
These are exactly the parameters that are hardest to hold on a building site and are checked as a matter of routine in a plant — because the reinforcement is laid on spacers in the mould, the concrete is compacted on a vibrating table, and curing conditions are the same every day. On a building a few hundred metres from the sea this is not a technical detail but the difference in how the building will look in twenty years' time.
Scope of work: precast concrete external and internal loadbearing walls, lintel units, transport and erection.
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