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Unwieldy structural steel is a thing of the past with a new lightweight product, recently used on a major Melbourne refurb writes Katrina Fox.
In 2005 Smorgon Steel LiteSteel Technologies released an innovative new structural product - LSB (LiteSteel Beam). The technology implemented in LSB involved the use of a new simultaneous Dual Electric Resistance Welding (DERW) process, enabling LSB to be around 60 percent of the weight of traditional hot rolled structural steel beams. The advantages of this lighter load include easier handling as well as reductions in total installed cost.
A recent project where installing traditional steel beams would have been difficult, cumbersome and costly and which utilised LSB as an effective alternative was Summerlea in Hawthorne, Melbourne. According to Ian McGain, director of Rangeview Building, the building firm which worked on the project, Summerlea was an original Victorian mansion which had been extensively added to and modified tobecome a private hotel at the low end of the quality spectrum. A brief was given to Herniman Architects to convert it into 14 townhouse-type apartments, with the project is currently about halfway through completion, and structural elements in place.
"It was a grand old mansion, built in the 1880s and renovated in the...