Multifamily and apartments
Repetition is what panelization is best at, and an apartment building is repetition. Demising walls, fire separation and sound between units are the specification questions.
Multifamily buildings repeat: the same wall, the same opening, the same detail, dozens of times. That is precisely the condition under which factory production beats site fabrication.
The technical questions are different from a house, though. Demising walls have to separate fire and sound between tenancies, corridor walls have to do the same toward a means of egress, and the whole assembly may have to carry several floors.
Guardian's demising and corridor walls can be designed to carry multiple floors, can be classified as non-combustible, and have been tested to the ASTM E119 fire test with the E2226 hose stream. Engineered assemblies reach STC 59.
What Guardian publishes
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Demising and corridor walls can be designed to carry multiple floors, can be classified as non-combustible, and come in sections up to 10 ft high by 38 ft long.
Source · Shield™ Technical Product Description
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An STC rating of up to 59 is available in an engineered assembly.
Source · 3-Part Specification 1.5 E.3
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Canal Street Veterans' Housing used Shield™ load-bearing walls for five stories plus a habitable basement, minimising additional structural steel, at a density of 240 units per acre.
Source · Canal Street Veterans' Housing case study
Written by Data Subsystems, for Guardian Structural Technologies. Last updated .
Drafted from Guardian Structural product literature and published building-science sources. Awaiting Guardian technical review. Confirm any figure against the current product documents or ask us before you rely on it in a design.
