One Steel Reinforcing has signed the distribution rights for Blockaid, a new Australian designed alignment bracket for use in masonry wall construction.
Blockaid is a plastic bracket which is fitted into the top of the masonry block to securely locate the horizontal and vertical reinforcing steel within the masonry block wall.
Currently, the method used to locate the reinforcing steel is time consuming and does not provide any assurance of the correct location of the steel within the wall.
Blockaid reduces construction time by as much as 20 per cent when compared to fully tying the steel in place, according to an independent assessment by Newcastle Innovation, Industry Development Centre at the University of Newcastle.
The potential time and cost savings are enormous, says Russell Hancock of Hancock and Owen Services, Newcastle.
"We used Blockaid in a fuel terminal block wall to locate the horizontal and vertical reinforcing steel, which ensured the wall was built in accordance with the Engineering Specification," he says.
"The wall was constructed in considerably less time, eliminated lapping the vertical steel and a steel fixer was not required on the job to fix the steel because Blockaid captured the steel in the correct location and held it in place during the core-fill."
The invention of Blockaid started when block layer, Oliver Kohl, realised that a simple bracket could be used to align Control Joint dowels to ensure they function correctly and that progressed to designing a bracket to align all the horizontal and vertical reinforcing steel in masonry block wall constructions.
