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(Ms. Marty McIntyre). You can manufacture it in a
couple of different ways.
One is a wet cast method, where you have a pretty
typical wet mix of concrete.
You put hoses in the forms that kind of look like fire hoses.
You place the concrete on top of it.
As the concrete cures, you pull those hoses out of it
and you end up with those cores.
The other way is you can use an extruded method, and with that
the concrete is very dry and it actually comes out of a machine.
I always liken it to a tube of toothpaste, where you're kind of
pushing the concrete out.
The concrete might be about the same consistency
of toothpaste as well.
And you might have augurs working in there, and
that's going to create the openings in it.
And with that dry mix you can almost walk on it immediately.
So that's the couple of different areas that you
can manufacture it in.
Hollowcore, usually, is going to be about 30 feet long.
And we see a lot of it used for hotels, motels,
single-family condominiums, schools, any place where you
want to get a nice long span and any place that fire safety
is going to be an issue.
It can be a really good product in any of those cases.
Double tees.
They're called double tees because that's what they
look like, two T's right next to each other.
Double tees have two parts of the product.
The first part is your top surface that goes across the
top of the tees, and that's going to be called your ***.
Your *** is usually going to be about 12 feet wide.
Sometimes we have 15 feet wide, but usually it's going
to be about 12 feet wide.
And then you'll have the two stems coming down,
the two stems of the tee, and those are usually going to be
about 18 inches deep.
And then you're going to have a piece of precast
that's generally 60 feet long and 12 feet wide, but
you can go up to about 110 feet long with this.
So, we see this used a lot for parking decks, that's really
the number one thing that you see it used in.
You also see it used for, the other building that I have down
there is a convention center, where you might have heavier
loads on the floor, swimming pools, some condominium
buildings will use them where you need longer spans.
So, this is generally longer spans and a little bit heavier
duty floor product than you would get with the hollowcore.
Architectural precast, this is what you're going to see
when you visit Alsip.
And architectural precast really starts to be where you have
a lot more color, texture.
Usually it's a cladding product on the exterior of the building.
You can have color integrated right into it.
You're going to start to have your curved pieces.
You're going to start to have more decorative
detail added to it.
And these are usually cast in wooden forms
rather than in steel forms.
So you will have some repetition with them, but usually you're
going to have formwork that's built specifically
for that particular building.
Then you can also have wall panels.
Wall panels can still have a little bit of decorative pieces
to them, but in most cases rather than having
the color integrated right into it you're going to
stain over the concrete, so both the yellow and
the blue are stained right into there.
Sometimes we see people just leave the concrete exposed
like you see here.
But these are usually cast in what our industry calls
long line beds.
And so those beds can be 150 feet long, and they
cast multiple pieces all at the same time, so usually
not as much decorative detail added to those.
Then you can also have structural products.
Those would be columns, beams, inverted T-beams, any kind of
structural wall panel, things like that, and that can be
the entire structure and frame of a building.
Typically when you're using precast as the structural
system, we see it usually used anywhere from 2 stories
to about 11 or 12 stories, would be typical.
There is a project in California that goes 22 stories, that's
about as high as it's gone but, you know, we see a lot of
8- to 12-story structures done in structural precast.
We also have modular construction,
in this case it's a prison.
That's probably the most popular use for it where
we've got the prison cells.
And one of the reasons that this is so popular for the prisons is
it can all be done off-site.
So they add the furniture, the communications equipment,
the safety equipment, all at the precaster's site.
They bring it out to the job site, they stack them, one right
on top of the other, and in this case they've got the two prison
cells and then they've got a lip coming out for a walkway.
We don't see a whole lot of prisons being built in Illinois
right now considering we have one sitting empty,
but for awhile that was being done.
The interesting thing about these is the whole idea of
modularity is really being carried into a lot of different
products as well, the wall panels and floor systems.
I'm starting to see more things being added
at the precast plant.
So the electrical conduit and boxes are being cast right in,
holes for the plumbing being cast right in.
So a lot of that is happening at the manufacturer's site
rather than happening at the job site.
And that's something that a lot of insurance companies like
because they feel it's a more controlled environment.
And then we also do a lot of transportation products.
In Illinois, the three biggest transportation products,
well, four really.
Bulb tees, like you see going across.
Box beams--those are usually for shorter bridges, they're
hollow boxes, usually they have like a styrofoam piece in the
middle with four sides of concrete around it.
The bulb tees are shaped kind of like this with
a bulb on the bottom.
Sound wall--up in the Chicago area, there's quite
a bit of sound wall.
And then also retaining wall systems.
So those are the biggest transportation products
that we see.
Yes?
(male speaker). [unclear audio].
(Ms. McIntyre). He was asking what
sound wall is.
Sound wall is a wall system that you would see
on the side of a highway.
So usually it's some kind of decorative concrete piece
about 8 inches thick.
You see it in more densely populated urban areas where
they don't want the sound of the highway going to the homes
on either side, or the businesses on either side.
So we see a lot of that up north, not so much down here.
So that's kind of the typical products that you see
with precast concrete.
Does anybody have any questions about any of
the products that you've seen?
(male speaker). I've got a quick question.
(Ms. McInyre). Oh, yeah.
(male speaker). On several of the buildings,
like when they were talking about buildings,
I'm assuming that some of that is hollowcore with
some kind of insulation [unclear audio] unit?
(Ms. McIntyre). For the walls or for the floors?
(male speaker). Yes, for the exterior,
primarily for the exterior walls.
(Ms. McIntyre). Yeah, some of them, not so they
don't use, in this part of the country we don't see a whole lot
of hollowcore being used for the wall systems.
In Wisconsin, we do see that sometimes.
So it's really a matter of what's available locally.
But yeah, you can put insulation right into the wall panels.
It depends on what you're using it for that starts to make it
a little bit more expensive.
So a lot of times you'll put up the concrete system and then
put the insulaion and then put the dry wall over it if
you're going to dry wall it.
But if you're not going to dry wall over it, you can
put the insulation right in the middle of it.
Anything else?
Well, I thought I would just show you some projects just so
you can see what typical projects look like with precast.
We do a lot of athletic facilities--the risers, beams,
raker beams, the exterior systems.
We see a lot of this thin brick being added right to the
precast wall panels so you get a lot of decorative finishes
that way, but we see a lot of those.
And a lot of schools are using precast these days, whether
they be just the gymnasium with the steel form or the
steel structure on the interior with precast wall panels
around it or decorative pieces.
Centralia High School just did a really nice high school
out of precast.
A lot of healh care facilities.
In the healthcare market we see more of the exterior skin on the
cladding products being used.
Some designers feel like there's vibration issues that
they want to stay away from with the structural system.
Although I have seen it used successfully, structural systems
used successfully in healthcare as well.