Note: Descriptions are shown in the official language in which they were submitted.
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
This invention relates to designs, materials, and
procedures to create high-quality, low-cost buildings which
are quick and easy to erect. The buildings comprise
manufactured components which may be assembled rapidly by
unskilled labour, typically within three to five days,
yielding a building that is comparable in appearance and
superior in quality to a building produced by traditional
building methods.
There is a pressing world-wide need for housing. The
present demand is for 250 million units. It is believed
that traditional building methods will never address this
need. A construction method is required that is efficient
and economical, which produces housing that is acceptable
and durable.
Much of this housing is required in remote areas, with
extremes of climate, lack of skilled labour, and no
infrastructure. Typically, this would be much of the Third
World, and communities in the arctic or the antarctic.
While these communities are cut-off by vast distances,
television makes them aware of the standards of living in
the rest of the world, a standard to which they aspire.
Thus they will not be satisfied by an inferior product.
Transport costs to such areas are very large and are a major
consideration in providing a product.
There is an attempt to address this market by providing
pre-manufactured housing. Some of the present offerings are
technologically advanced but are extremely inflexible; they
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
- 2 -
cannot be adapted to individual wishes. Some of these
buildings also have a strange space-age appearance which is
not culturally acceptable. At a lower level of technology
more flexibility may be achieved, but at this level
efficiency and economy are reduced, so there is little
advantage over traditional construction methods.
Traditional construction methods for the provision of
frame housing, whether utilizing wood or metal studs,
usually involves delivery of raw building materials to the
building site and subsequent building on the building site
of open work frames for each wall. The open work frames are
then, before or after erection, provided with cladding.
Insulation is usually provided after erection either in
recesses between studs and/or as foam panels applied flush
onto the frame. Vapour barrier is also applied
independently after erection of the frames. Electrical
wiring runs to the exterior of the vapour barrier into which
cuts must be made for socket access. In all the erection of
a building from raw materials is a skilled job for a
craftsman.
Various prefabricated buildings have been proposed.
Where these are reasonably low cost they tend to be "fit-
together" units such as half houses which tend to be large
and require specialized transport. Often such units exceed
the sizes allowed on the roads and special provisions for
their transport must also be made. Other prefabricated
buildings and parts thereof have also been proposed, usually
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
- 3 -
for temporary structures which may be repeatedly assembled
and disassembled.
The basic philosophy of this invention is to
manufacture building components which are so technologically
advanced they reduce to a minimum the tasks that are needed
to assemble them on-site. Thus all electrical and plumbing
work, all measuring and cutting, fitting and testing, are
done and checked in the factory. Despite this, the system
offers considerable flexibility of lay out.
U.S. Patent No. 5,970,672 issued October 26, 1999, to
Gerald Robinson and assigned to Amisk Technologies Inc.
provides one solution to the problem.
The building of that U.S. patent may have a higher
insulation level (R-30) and is lighter than any other
building of similar size, so the components are easy to
transport. They may be assembled by an unskilled staff,
with no left-over waste to dispose of. The building of said
patent includes a plurality of prefabricated building panels
each having a rigid peripheral metal frame about a slab of
foam insulation. Each frame side comprises a pair of
elongate metal C-sections, adjacent pairs of adjoining
frames forming load bearing members for roof trusses. C-
sections of each pair are spaced apart by plastic spacing
and latching strips which serve the dual purpose of spacing
the C-sections apart to form a thermal break and latching
adjacent wall panels together.
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
- 4 -
It has now surprisingly been discovered that a) it is
not necessary to utilize plastic foam slabs to impart
rigidity to the wall panels, and b) it is not necessary to
link adjacent panels together through elongate plastic
spacing and latching strips.
According to the invention there is provided a building
system for a building having at least one room therein, the
system comprising: a plurality of prefabricated wall
sections to form exterior walls when aligned with a side
edge of one section abutting a side edge of an adjacent
section, the height of a section, when erected, generally
corresponding to the height of said room, and each wall
section including a rigid peripheral metal frame filled with
insulation, each peripheral metal frame comprising a pair of
coextensive, parallel, spaced apart sub-frames, connectable
to one another in fixed relationship through top connecting
means at top margins of said sub-frames and through bottom
connecting means at bottom margins of said sub-frames, each
peripheral metal frame including parallel composite side
supports to be vertical when the wall section is erected,
each parallel composite side support comprising one sub-
frame side member from a first of said pair of sub-frames
and another sub-frame side member from a second of said pair
of sub-frames, each of the top connecting means and the
bottom connecting means acting to connect a composite, side
support of one wall section to a composite side support of
an adjoining wall section to form a load bearing member
comprised by four sub-frame side members.
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
- 5 -
The insulation may conveniently be fibreglass batting.
It may be retained in place within the frame at least partly
by a tight fit within the frame. However, each sub-frame
side member may be an elongate metal C-section comprising a
web and two legs, the legs extending inwardly of the
peripheral frame possibly to grip edge portions of fibre
glass batting.
The top and bottom connection means may comprise a top
plate and a bottom plate bolted or otherwise secured to
respective top and bottom elongate sub-frame members of the
sub-frames. Alternatively or additionally, the top and
bottom sub-frame members may be connected through a spacer
strip between them. Such spacer strip may be plastic or
wood to provide thermal insulation between the frames.
A plastic latching or thermal break strip or other
insulation may be inserted between the sub-frame side
members of each composite side support, for example as set
out in U.S. Patent No. 5,970,672. However, such latching
and thermal break strip is generally unnecessary. The rigid
wall sections may be adequately held tightly together by
ensuring that the top and bottom connecting means extend
between adjoining wall section to connect them together.
When the insulation is fibreglass batting it will tend to
expand into the space between sub-frame side members.
As set out in U.S. Patent No. 5,970,672, the building
system may include roof trusses, ceiling panels, platforms,
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
- 6 -
interior partitioning, hingeable tracking for the interior
partitioning, etc.
The present invention may provide significant
advantages in cost of the product in that fibreglass batting
is considerably less expensive than the plastic foam slabs
utilized in the system of U.S. Patent No. 5,970,672 even
although vapour barrier should be utilized with the fibre
glass batting.
It was surprising to the present inventor that wall
sections of suitable rigidity and strength could be provided
without the bracing provided by the foam slab and without
special attention to heavy duty vertical load bearing
members. Moreover, the elimination of the latching strip
saves expenditure.
A further advantage of the present invention is that
manufacture of the wall sections may be a two step process.
For shipping into hard to reach places for which transport
space is limited, baled, compressed fibreglass batting and
the sub-frame side members and top and bottom members may be
shipped, disassembled to an interim assembly station where
the sub-frames and possibly the main frames may be assembled
ready for erection into a building.
To act as an additional support for fibreglass batting,
an inner cladding skin, e.g. plywood sheet or fibreboard
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
_ 7 _
sheet, may be added at this time. Such skin may add
additional bracing which may be reassuring to the user.
A further advantage due to the use of fibreglass
batting is that it is not necessary to use furring channel
to route the electrical wiring as was the case in the system
of U.S. Patent No. 5,970,672.
Embodiments of the invention will now be described by
way of example with reference to the drawings, in which:
Figure 1 is a pictorial representation of a building
erected utilizing a system according to the invention having
premanufactured structural wall sections;
Figure 2 shows the arrangement of sub-frames;
Figure 3 shows wall sections connected together
edgewise; and
Figure 4 shows a section through two adjoining wall
sections.
Figure 1 shows the general structural layout for a
building utilizing the building system according to the
invention. Roof trusses 10 which may be fabricated from
cold rolled steel sections rest on composite load bearing
members 12 of wall sections 14. The wall sections 14
comprise a rigid peripheral frame 15, itself comprising a
pair of parallel, coextensive, spaced-apart sub-frame 16
(see Figure 2) formed from elongate metal members. The
sides 18 of the rigid peripheral frame 15 are parallel to
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
_ g _
one another in the plane of the frame. The sides 18 form
composite side supports to be vertical when the wall section
is erected. Each parallel composite side support 18
comprises spaced apart parallel sub-frame side members 20.
Adjoining wall sections meet so that one composite side
support 18 of one wall section is adjacent a composite side
support member 18 of the adjoining wall section 14 (see
Figure 3). These two composite side supports 18 (comprising
together four sub-frame side members 20) form a load bearing
vertical member.
Roof trusses 10 bear downwardly only on the composite
load bearing members 12.
The sub-frames 16 of each frame 15 are connected on to
the other along their top and bottom edges. Conveniently, a
top plate U-channel 24 (see Figure 3) is provided having a
top plate web 26 extending over the top of both sub-frames
16. Legs 28 of the U-channel 24 extend downwardly to hold
upper margins of the sub-frames 16 in the channel 24. One
of the sub-frames 16 may be bolted to one leg 28 of the U-
channel 24 and the other sub-frame 16 may be bolted to the
other leg 28 of the U-channel 24 to provide some clearance
between the sub-frames. Similarly a bottom plate U-channel
may be provided having a web 32 and upstanding leg 34.
Bottom margins of the sub-frames 16 fit into the bottom
25 plate U-channel 30 and are bolted to legs 34 in a similar
manner to that described with reference to top plate U-
channel 24.
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
- 9 -
Alternatively or additionally, a spacer strip 36 (see
Figure 2) may be provided between the top and bottom margins
of the sub-frame 16 and bolted or otherwise secured
therebetween.
Legs 28 of top plate U-channel 24 (or individual plates
28 when the top plate is a U-channel) and legs 34 of bottom
plate U-channel 30 (or individual plates 34) extend over the
full length of any wall which is to be erected thus they
serve to connect the wall sections 14 together. A leg 28 is
bolted to the sub-frame 16 of one wall section 14 and also
to a sub-frame 16 of an adjoining wall section 14. It may
be possible to fit the wall sections sufficiently tightly
together for bolting of the sub-frame to the top plate 24 or
to the bottom plate 30 manually but if it is desired to fit
the wall sections together more tightly a clinching tool as
described and claimed in Canadian Patent Application No.
2,272,113 filed May 13, 1999 of which the inventor is John
Fourdraine. Alternatively, any progressive tightening
system may be used for tightening the wall sections one
against the other.
Conveniently the sub-frame side members 20 and top and
bottom members 17, 19 are cold rolled galvanized steel C-
sections. Mouths of all the C-sections whether of the sub-
frame side members or of the sub-frame top and bottom
members may be directed inwardly of the frame so that arms
40, 41 of the C-sections may be bolted to respective top and
CA 02291481 1999-12-02
- 10 -
bottom plates 24, 30 and inner arms of the C-sections may
secured to spacer strip 36.
Fibreglass batting 44 is located to fill the space
within the frame and the whole thickness thereof from an
outer face of one sub-frame 16 to the outer face of the
other sub-frame 16. The fibreglass batting is compressed
slightly to fit into the frame and distal ends of the arms
of the C-sections may become somewhat embedded in the
fibreglass batting and help to hold it in place. The
fibreglass batting 44 may also spread into the space between
the C-sections to enhance the air thermal break
therebetween.
When the building system is to be transported under
difficult conditions, it may be desirable to utilize
transport space even more efficiently than is normal. When
circumstances are thus, the sub-frame side members 20 and
the top and bottom members 17, 19 may be cut to length and
drilled for any necessary or desirable bolts. They may be
then shipped to a subassembly station in this condition and
assembled into wall sections at the subassembly station.
Fibreglass batting may be shipped in compressed baled
condition and fitted into the wall sections at the
subassembly station. As an additional support for the
fibreglass batting, it may be desirable to fit an inner skin
46 of outer cladding over one outer face of a sub-frame 16
to be coextensive with it. The inner skin of the outer
cladding may conveniently be plywood, particle board, etc.
