Never have bathrooms been more scrutinised than they are now. Once the smallest room in the house, they are now palaces of design with enormous expectations placed upon them. Those expectations and demands are multiplied exponentially when the bathroom is replicated repeatedly, such as for multi-residential projects.
Waterproofing has historically been a time-consuming event in the construction timeline, taking days per room and often subject to the errors of rushed tradies who, in multi-residential builds especially, are working against the clock.
Damian Russo from Multipanel Waterproofing Building Panels sees this as the ideal landscape for their panel system.
“In three hours you can have the wet area lined and ready for tiling the next day,” says Russo. Multipanel has been recently working on a 66-townhouse development, with each home featuring three bathrooms.
“We’ve looked at the costs involved, and while the product may cost around $140 more per room, the cost in labour savings is substantial,” he says.
The panel system also removes the human factor – ensuring a consistent depth of each panel membrane of 12mm, with some specific panels including a built-in fall to the grate that make tilers particularly happy, and their time on each bathroom further reduced.
And while the Multipanel system is currently only accredited as a waterproofing system in Victoria, the product can still be used in other states on a case-by-case basis.
According to reports, national accreditation is also in the pipeline.
Already used in several marque office buildings such as 480 Queen Street in Brisbane and Barangaroo in Sydney is a liquid waterproofing system, Enviro 200P Ultra.
Produced by Envirosystems, the water-based water proofing membrane is flexible and accommodates a dynamic range of angles and design concepts.
The complete version of this story will be available in the January-February edition of INFOLINK | BPN.
