One constant piece of feedback in the brick industry is "when are you going to make bricks lighter?"
PGH has answered that call with the development of our new lightweight range of common bricks. The new SuperLite (standard size) is approximately 20% lighter* than current products, while the schooner size, SchoonerLite, is over 15% lighter.*
These products are the first of their kind for the brick industry - that is lightweight and suitable for load bearing applications. The SuperLite version also has an increased fire rating to 120/120/120.
The potential for these products from a work safety perspective is very exciting, especially regarding manual handling which is a major concern for Workcover. Approximately 1,400 people are seriously injured or suffer from illness related to manual handling each year, costing about $34 million a year.
Peter presented at the August meeting a case study on the products detailing the benefits of working with lightweight bricks and we will continue to monitor the progress of this case study.
There are several other bricks that will be released in the next couple of months: ScratchLite (for rendering), SmoothLite and DoubleLite (double height) versions.
* based on published, comparative brick weights being 3.0kg for standard bricks and 4.5kg for schooners. |
