June 11, 2007

Innovation

Beaver Plastics uses ICF for large industrial build

Jean Sorensen

Correspondent

ACHESON

Beaver Plastics Ltd.’s new manufacturing plant, located on 15 acres just outside Edmonton, yielded up a few surprises for general manager Todd McCarthy, who set out to build the first large industrial complex using insulated concrete forms (ICF) from company product, known as Logix.

“We wanted to show it could be used for big-box style, industrial buildings,” says McCarthy of the new 130,000 square foot facility now located in Acheson, Alberta.

Logix is the ICF product that Beaver Plastics developed four years ago and it spurred the growth of the company into a new plant. “We have used the product for apartment buildings, strip mall, and stores but they have only been about a quarter the size of the new facility. This is really the first large-scale application,” he tells.

One of the surprises soon realized, says McCarthy, was that as project costs were examined, it became apparent that ICF construction was as cost competitive as using more conventional forms of building large industrial structures.

Beaver Plastics Ltd.

Trucks Keep Pumping Despite the Cold

Alberta's cold weather didn't stop Beaver Plastics construction this past winter as the Logix ICF system provided insulation for the concrete to set. The limiting factor was whether concrete would freeze in the truck lines.

Beaver Plastics started in 1967 when company founders Grant and Sheila McCarthy began making industrial products in Edmonton from expanded polystyrene (EPS). “There were manufacturers producing foam cups and other commodity foam products, but not industrial products,” says McCarthy, son of the company founders.

Beaver Plastics produces high-performance, engineered products for packaging, commercial and residential construction.

The old Edmonton plant was only 37,000 square feet. At one time, equipment had been aligned to allow a streamlined flow of product through the plant. “As the company continued to grow and expand over the years, more production equipment needed to be added. We had become crammed and really lost our product flow,” says McCarthy.

The Acheson site, which is a 10-minute drive outside Edmonton, provides room for several large future expansions. The challenge was using the Logix ICF product to achieve the size of structure required to house Beaver Plastics’s growing business and where it was headed in the future.

“In this day and age, pre-engineered steel buildings are touted as the quickest and cheapest way to build a low-cost warehouse, but, in the end, the cost differential was minimal,” he says.

Beaver Plastics Ltd.

New Plant for Beaver Plastics

Beaver Plastics plant in Acheson is the first large-scale use of the Logix system to construct an industrial plant. The new building, now complete, is 130,000 square feet and uses insulated concrete forms as the building material. Logix ICF has been used in apartments, houses, and malls throughout North America.

The building sequence using ICF is different than steel. It reverses the construction process, says McCarthy. Steel begins with the frame and the roof before walls are constructed. But, ICF focuses on the walls first before roof work begins. Comparing the ICF building system to conventional warehouse style construction “is a little like comparing apples to oranges,” says McCarthy. “The end product is entirely different. With ICF construction you end up with a wall with thermal mass which contributes to significant on-going energy savings.”

McCarthy says trades and the general contractor found the product easy to work with and “a positive experience.” The general contractor, who worked on the project, now is using the Logix system to bid on projects, while three of the subcontractors have used Logix to build their own homes.

A major issue in using concrete for new-builds is Alberta’s cold winters where concrete will freeze. ICF’s insulation, which sandwiches the poured concrete, will hold the heat generated by the curing concrete and aid it in setting, therefore eliminating any threat of freezing.

During construction, says McCarthy, “The limiting factor was really whether it was too cold for the pump trucks to deliver the concrete as it would freeze in the truck’s lines.”

Logix’s insulating factors also came into play during the summer months. “We had days when it was plus 30 degrees outside,” tells McCarthy, but inside the structure, crews worked comfortably in t-shirts with no air conditioning. When tradesmen left in the late afternoon, “they had no idea it was 33 or 34 degrees outside”, he tells.

The company also insulated the roof with its Terrafoam tapered roof insulation. “We also used our insulated concrete floor system to form the floor for the upper level of our office,” says McCarthy. “We really blanketed the building from top to bottom with our insulated products.”

By using the insulation plus the ICF concrete, McCarthy feels optimistic that during his first year (2006-2007) of operation in the new manufacturing plant, the company will see up to a 50 per cent savings of energy costs, an important consideration for large-scale buildings.

The interior partition wall of the company’s two-storey office was also constructed of Logix. “We did it for sound abatement. Right now, we have an extremely quiet office,” he says, adding at the old plant there was always the equipment noises that penetrated the office.

Major firms employed on the project were: general contractor Cormode & Dickson (1983) Ltd., Unigroup Architecture and Interior Design Inc., and structural engineers Protostatix Engineering Consultants Inc. >

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