JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #120 - April 2018 - 31

Opportunities for composite profiles in the residential housing market

and pickets and rails can be combined to
create a unique system.
Pultruded decking is an attractive, low-maintenance alternative to traditional decking
materials such as wood and is particularly
suited to applications where stronger decking
is required. The panels will not rot, rust, chip
or mildew, and are ideal for high-moisture
environments, including saltwater.

Lightweight flat-pack houses also have a role
in disaster relief. Easy to transport and simple
and fast to construct, pultruded buildings
could be employed as temporary accommodation for people displaced during natural
disasters such as hurricanes.
When no longer required, the buildings could
be dismantled and transported to another site,
or stored until needed again.
Future potential
Although they are still relatively new to the
residential housing market, the properties of
pultruded composite profiles have earned
them a position of awareness and respect
among architects, engineers and building

owners. Their potential for further growth is
great.
Design flexibility and the ability to customise
the mechanical performance of pultruded
profiles according to the application are recognised advantages. The development of further
standards covering the design, fabrication and
installation of pultruded profiles will continue
to make it easier for designers and builders to
specify pultruded products.
Many of the properties that make composites
the material of choice for performance reasons
also make them a more sustainable material
than metals or wood.
Their durability and resistance to corrosion result in a longer service life, lower maintenance
requirements and less frequent replacement.
Lightweight composite products are often
easily handled and installed without heavy
lifting equipment and shipment weights are
lower.
Direct contributions to environmental impact
can be seen in applications that reduce energy
requirements, such as composite window and
door profiles that result in fewer air leaks and
better seals than wood and steel products.
Pultruded glass fibre composites offer a
high-performance, cost-effective alternative
to more familiar building materials, and are
suited to a large number of applications in the
residential construction market.
More information:
www.pultruders.com

Startlink is a pultruded component kit that can be rapidly assembled into a variety of low-rise building forms
without metal fasteners

N°120 April 2018

/ jec composites magazine

Feature Building and Construction

Affordable housing systems
The demand for affordable housing is growing
throughout the world. Pultruded profiles
open up opportunities for low-maintenance,
highly energy efficient homes that are fast to
build and easy to alter and reuse. Lightweight
pultruded components result in reduced
shipping costs, and lightweight houses are
easier to build and require less energy to heat.
Modular buildings can be designed in which
all the parts are prefabricated to fit neatly together without cutting, thus reducing labour
and waste on site. The Startlink system is one
example of a modular construction system
for low-cost thermally-efficient homes based
on a small number of pultruded profiles that
bolt and "snap-fit" together, enabling rapid
assembly. House builder Larkfleet Homes
opened a Startlink test house alongside its
UK headquarters in 2012, which weighs just
18 tonnes compared with a conventional
40-tonne house.
Because of the snap-fit assembly, Startlink
buildings can be easily altered or extended, and
they can be dismantled for reuse elsewhere if
desired. The composite material is stable, inert
and impervious to moisture, requiring only
the addition of insulation to build houses.
Thermal bridging is eliminated and the inherent dimensional stability of pultruded profiles
means that air tightness is easily achieved.
By avoiding steel and concrete, these houses
are quick to build and up to 25% less expensive
than traditional buildings. Because pultruded
profiles are so light, concrete foundations
would not be needed.
Instead, a Startlink building is best supported
on pultruded piles driven into the ground and
the quantities of raw materials and energy
required to construct the foundation are a tiny
fraction of those required in a conventional
building.
With appropriate insulation, the house has

embodied energy only 20% greater than that
of a conventional timber-framed building
(containing kiln-dried, double vacuum
treated timber and raised from mass concrete
footings) of the same floor plan area and built
to the same Passivhaus-compliant standard.
However, the Startlink house needs no maintenance and is rot and termite proof.
It may also be possible to construct such
homes in areas where flood risks mean that
the construction of conventional buildings is
not viable.
If built and furnished with suitable flooring
materials and decorative finishes on the
ground floor, Startlink homes are highly
"flood resistant" since the absence of extensive
foundations and the nature of the pultruded
materials mean that the structure is unaffected
by water.

http://www.pultruders.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #120 - April 2018