Westfield Miranda, Sydney

BUILDER: Westfield Design & Construct
CONTRACTOR: Terrazzo (Aust), Marble Pty Ltd (Existing areas), Saba Tiling (New areas)

CHALLENGE:
In consultation with Westfield Design & Construct, Terrazzo (Aust) Marble Pty Ltd engaged ARDEX to investigate different options for the re-tiling of the existing centre of the Westfield Shopping Centre at Miranda, in Sydney’s south.

The main criteria when looking at the different options were speed of curing for the screed and tiling adhesive as work had to be completed at night and the centre to be ready in the morning for minimal disruption to walkways.

A traditional sand and cement screed was compared against the ARDEX A 38 Rapid Set Screed to view what the best solution for the project.

SOLUTION:
The ARDEX A 38 Rapid set screed was chosen to rescreed the walkways following removal of existing tiles and screed. Having the ability to accept heavy foot traffic within 8 hours of installation, the ARDEX A 38 screed system ensured that strict timeframes were met during the installation of this critical part of the project.

Achieving a compressive strength of 35 MPa and being dimensionally stable, the ARDEX A 38 ensures the base of the tiling system contains the perfect mix of strength and flexibility.

With its high compressive strength, scissor lifts can be employed directly on the screeded floor, something that is difficult to do with traditional sand and cement screed. The ARDEX A 38 and ARDEX S 16 system meets the low VOC emission requirements of the Green Building Council of Australia Green Star IEQ-13, which were also a consideration for this project.

As ARDEX are committed to ensuring contractors are exposed to high quality training in the installation of their products, ARDEX conducted on site training of the ARDEX A 38 rapid set screed at Terrazzo (Aust) Marble’s head office, with representatives from Terrazzo (Aust) Marble and Westfield attending.

The following night the areas containing the A 38 screed were cleaned and prepared for the ARDEX S 16 Rapid Hardening and Rapid Drying Tile and Natural Stone Adhesive to install the terrazzo tiles and natural stone.

Besides being ideal for installing natural stone Susceptible to moisture sensitivity, the main benefit of using this adhesive on the project is the curing time and the ability for traffic to walk on the flooring, 2-3 hours after installation in suitable conditions. This allowed large areas to be tiled overnight and ready for trading each morning with no disruption to shoppers.

Although the system was originally specified on the existing shopping centre flooring, Westfield were so happy with the performance of the products and the response from ARDEX to ensure the project ran smoothly, they specified the system on the new areas of the shopping centre being installed by Saba Brothers Tiling. In all, the project totalled approximately 12000m².