An easy-to-assemble product
At Jyväskylä, in total 1.5 kilometres of METAFORM® Joints were used in the construction of the new hypermarket. This consisted of 1.1 metres of METAFORM® DUO and 400 metres of METAFORM®. The products cover 4 000 square metres of the total 13 000 square meters of the premises’, and were used in the parking area of the complex as well as its retail area.
Jukka Lintulahti, responsible for the project at Lehto Oy, said: "METAFORM® Free Movement Joint System is very simple and therefore easy to assembly from the viewpoint of functionality and in terms of its assembly technology. Simplicity makes it a good product to use. With Peikko we have a long history of cooperation and we will definitely use METAFORM® later. This project has proceeded in an excellent manner.”
A cost-effective system
METAFORM® is prefabricated, multi-purpose, leave-in-place Free Movement Joint System with integrated load transfer systems, designed for medium to heavy-duty concrete floors. It was originally a product developed by Metalscreed Ltd, which became part of Peikko’s product range when Peikko acquired Metalscreed in 2013.
Janne Saarivirta, Sales Manager of Flooring Products at Peikko Finland, noted METAFORM® can be used to form either expansion or contraction free movement joints in ground-bearing and pile-supported concrete floors. “It also provides a number of modular variants based on the METAFORM® base rail, which provides effective wrap-around joint arris armoring.”
Toni Metsi, Sales Manager at Peikko Finland, noted that compared to Peikko’s older products LS1 and LS2 Expansion Joints, METAFORM® Joints are shorter and straighter, and provide technically better gripping mechanism and are not sensitive to break. “Our older product LS2 Joint was six meters long, but METAFORM® is just three meters which improves the straightness of the joint. Tolerances of +- 0.5 mm/m are particularly suitable for high-class floors. METAFORM® is also easy to modify for different kind of loads. The dowels are 5, 6 or 8 mm and dowel centers c/c 600 mm or 300 mm, which maximize load transfer capacity. Pricewise METAFORM® is also more economic than our older models,” Metsi explained.
The beginning looks promising
Jari Räty, who oversees the assembly process of the hypermarket floors at Megalattiat Oy, said after getting used to the new product and mastering its finer details, assembly of floors at Jyväskylä building site has proceeded smoothly. “The floors have already started settling, which is a good sign. We are beyond halfway of the project and will see the completed result in about four months. It already looks very promising,” Räty said.
The construction in Jyväskylä kicked off in early 2015, and the building is expected to be complete by spring 2016. It is the first major project where METAFORM® joints have been used in Finland. ”However, we are already in discussions of using it in new projects next year – these are commercial premises elsewhere in Finland. It’s obvious this product suits the Nordic market very well,” Peikko’s Metsi concluded.
