What Is A Suspended Concrete Floor

Instead of timber joists suspended concrete floor constructions use pre cast concrete planks or smaller pre cast concrete beams with concrete blocks laid in between.

What is a suspended concrete floor.

There are two basic ways to make the floors of a building. This is generally an old fashioned type of floor and there are much more modern options available including solid floors which tend to need less maintenance in the long term. The floor spans between supports and will normally deflect under load to a dimension that is limited by the design used. A suspended floor is a ground floor with a void underneath the structure.

It s also common to have suspended concrete floors in a domestic and commercial property. Suspended concrete floors can be supported on timber structures and do not necessarily require steel or masonry support if designed by a qualified engineer with experience in timber design. They are often preferred as they can span greater distances than timber joists can. When selecting a floor construction there are a number of functional requirements that need to be considered.

There are various pros and cons to these types of floor some of which impact on the energy efficiency of the building and how you go about insulating them. Some slabs have hollow channels running through them these hollow core slabs are used to help reduce weight and also to allow cabling and piping to be run through the slab. You can either have a concrete base or a suspended floor usually made out of timber. Suspended floors a suspended concrete floor is a floor slab where its perimeter is or at least two of its opposite edges are supported on walls beams or columns that carry its self weight and imposed loading.

This type of concrete slab construction requires different concrete slab design from the one we normally se. The floor can be formed in various ways using timber joists precast concrete panels block and beam system or cast in situ with reinforced concrete. This reduces the overall embodied energy and makes for less costly construction. Suspended concrete floor construction is increasingly the most common flooring system specified in residential construction.