Alternate Consturction in Perth

Hi fellow Perth forum junkies,

I have a favour to ask as I'm doing a little bit of research and would like to leverage off everyone's collective eyes.

Can anyone point me in the direction of any large scale apartment projects in Perth metro that have used steel frame construction?
 
why steel, Kent?

some of the earlier Fini, Finbar and Mirvac stuff used conc tilt up with steel framing internally.

Terrible, terrible places to live. Steel transmits sound like no-ones business, so people 3 floors up can hear you opening and closing your bathroom door.

steel was swapped out for timber pretty quickly. then timber was swapped out for bricks again.

if it were me, doing an apartment development in today's market, i'd use R9.

but AFS Logicwall is used by Psaros and Georgiou - with great success. I like AFS a lot but it is conc intensive and while faster than bricks/tilt, it's still slower than R9.
 
I was looking to see how the end sales values went as a little bit of a research project.

Thanks for the comments, and yes acoustics would be very hard to contain.
 
it can comply easily enough for certification but they're not a lot of fun to live with.

a few in Northbridge are built like this too, from memory - the ones near the James St exit - and the prices today are the same as all conc / dbl brick etc.

i would have thought your land cost and target demographic would have more an impact on prices than what your internal walls are made of?
 
why steel, Kent?
Terrible, terrible places to live. Steel transmits sound like no-ones business, so people 3 floors up can hear you opening and closing your bathroom door.

steel was swapped out for timber pretty quickly. then timber was swapped out for bricks again.
R9..


sorry but I have to disagree here. I have lived in both steel frame construction with Hebel panels and double brick homes and by far steel frame with Hebel panels are far superior in both reduced acoustics and thermal properties.

those who's lived in a framed home will always agree frame building is far superior, the problem is the 4 large building companies here in WA has led the majority of the WA population to believe that brick is superior. In Sydney and just about everywhere else around the world it is mostly frame construction that's utilized and for many reasons.

I would say frame construction is most effective especially when building small multi-unit/apt development as they are much more cost effective and provides for more efficiency in many categories.

would like to backup my response with a thread from another post. Granted there are some who argued that their framed/hebel panel homes have poor noise isolation and further along the same thread several others argued the contrary. This is simply a matter of whether they built with batt insulation or not. the proper way is to always use batt insulation for all frame buildings. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1872011
 
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It wasn't the builders who led us down the double brick path, it was a huge campaign by Midland Brick.

That said I originally did an apprenticeship in bricklaying. Great way to earn a good living.
 
in WA we don't have the framed mindset so builders don't understand framing or the insulation required for it.

there's a company starting up soon that will be importing framing chippies from the east coast - that's how much WA builders don't 'get' framing.

so an east coast whirlpool thread kinda doesn't make much sense.
 
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