Revestimento de pedra na metade do tempo revestido de pedra

After decades quarrying, fabricating and supplying stone facades, Hugo Vega, Vice President of Sales at Polycor, noticed that the architects he was calling on were lacking a thin stone veneer that was light enough and strong enough for cladding large-scale architectural projects. After some R&D within the company, Polycor went on to release its 1 cm reinforced slabs and Vega returned to his architects in triumph. Only their response was, “That’s great, but we need a way to hang it.”

Mosaicos de pedra cadrada natural de mármore colorido

“The 1 cm product was a great innovation, but there was no way to apply it quickly and easily on large-scale projects,” Vega said.

Así que o equipo de Polycor volveu a desenvolverse.

Mentres tanto, outra resposta comezou a filtrarse no mundo A&D. Como sorpresa para Vega, as vendas de lousas de 1 cm despegaron no mercado residencial, onde os deseñadores e os seus clientes aproveitaron a oportunidade de incorporar paredes características nas duchas, contra salpicaduras de lousa completa e chemineas verticais sen costuras. (Podes ver eses deseños neste lookbook.) Cun terzo do peso do material habitual de 3 cm co que estaban tratando, os fabricantes xa non se rompían as costas para colocar unha lousa completa sobre un mostrador para instalar un backsplash. En 10 veces a resistencia á flexión, (grazas ao seu respaldo composto de policarbonato) desapareceu a preocupación de que as lousas orientadas verticalmente na lareira se rachasen ao instalar.

O mercado residencial estaba a bordo de pedra fina.

Un exemplo de contrasalpicadura fabricado a partir dunha lousa continua de ultrafino Mármore americano Cherokee branco.

That was great news, but Vega’s customers are typically working on commercial, not residential, specifications. So he continued to mull over this problem of adhering thin stone cladding to the exteriors of architectural projects. From time to time he would bump into the team from eclad at job sites where thicker panels of Polycor marble and granite were being installed with existing eclad systems, structural supports laid over existing facades in a modular fashion. A world leader in stone cladding systems, eclad has been creating and refining cladding systems since the 1990s. They too were seeing the same need in the market as the Polycor team – a fast and efficient way to clad with ultra-thin slabs. And so together the companies decided it was time to team up to bring a comprehensive thin stone cladding system to market.

O que desenvolveron é un sistema perfecto que aforra tempo, traballo e diñeiro: Eclad 1.

Ultra delgado Granito negro americano parece flotar, apoiado pola estrutura invisible Eclad 1.

O novo deseño baséase nun sistema de reixa de aluminio en combinación con ancoraxes socavadas unidas á parte traseira dos paneis de 1 cm para que permanezan ocultos cando se usa unha pedra tan delgada. Os paneis están dispoñibles ata 9 pés por 5 pés e pesan só seis libras por pé cadrado de media, facendo que o proceso de instalación sexa unha tarefa máis sinxela.

SABER MÁIS SOBRE OS SISTEMAS DE FACHADAS DE PEDRA

As áncoras permanecen ocultas para unha superficie sen obstáculos.

Instalación ao dobre do ritmo

O sistema completo proporciona paneis de pedra lixeiros previamente perforados sobre unha estrutura de revestimento protector que facilita a instalación de paneis de pedra pesados. Os sistemas de revestimento tradicionais dependen dunha pedra máis grosa combinada con calambres, correas e clips engorrosos. Cos instaladores de Eclad 1, simplemente deslice as lousas no seu lugar e afunde os parafusos nos orificios previamente perforados.

Un exemplo dunha maqueta de sistema Eclad 1 a pequena escala.

“It’s basically a different way of installing the stone,” Vega said. “With traditional cladding systems, the anchors have to be installed one-by-one. The process is more labor intensive. On average, it’s twice as fast installing panels using the Eclad grid system.”