Multi
- Storey Car Park
Architects
Model
Part
Construction
The construction
of the car park
With
production rising it was necessary at Longbridge to make use of the
available land more economically. A big portion of the land by 'Q'
gate was used for the storage and dispatching of vehicles. With CAB
2 coming on stream with the 1100 production, the problem could only
get worse. So it was decided that a multi-storey car park was the
only answer.
The company needed it to be built in a very short space of time and
so the contract was given to Wimpy who had taken on the agency for
a new building process developed by the South West Research
Institute in Texas USA, which was very suited to making
multi-storey car parks. The system was called the Lift Slab
technique which was introduced in 1950 in the United States
With this system it eliminated the needs for formwork, scaffolding
and mechanical hoists as the building goes higher and higher. The
first stage in the construction is the building of the pillars
initially not to the final height. As the floors are cast one on
top of another at ground level a solution is sprayed on them to
prevent them sticking together, this solution or ‘filling’, being
broken when the stacked slabs are lifed usually two at a
time.
At the top of every pillars is a jack which has a lifting capacity
of 65 tons., the total weight of two floors in this build was 700
tons. The first lift was made on the in Mid February. Although I
called it a jacking process, by means of hydrulic units at the top
of each column lift th slabs, their weight being taken by threaded
rods. When the worlds largest car park is complete it will have
eight floors along with a roof park, that will be able to houses
3,300 vehicles, and will have cost £550,000.
The top floor being 72 feet above ground and 722 feet above
sea-level. High-tensile steel bars play an essential part in the
strengthening of the concrete columns and floors and it is
estimated that the bars being used to reinforce the structure, if
placed end to end, would stretch from Longbridge to Aberdeen. the
columns up which the slabs have been slowly creeping and are also
cast on site , if laid end to end they would have reached to
Cadbury’s at Bournville.
This
building was not used in later years, and it was decided to
demolish it in 2001.
View
from the road by 'Q' gate
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