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Welcome to Tiltwall.com
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An Old Idea for General Contractors, With New Innovations
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Workers
help to guide a large mobile crane as it
lifts a tiltwall panel into place on this
Fort Worth, Texas warehouse building project.
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The basic principle behind tiltwall
construction - constructing walls horizontally, on the
ground, and then lifting them into place - is not a new
idea. Evidence exists that some buildings constructed
during the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages used this
approach. More recently, American settlers in the 1800s
gathered for "barn raisings" where they constructed
the wood walls for their buildings and tipped them up
into place.
The 20th century marked the true beginnings
of modern tiltwall construction. The development of
concrete reinforced with rebar in the early 1900s allows
builders to create tiltwall commercial structures as
we think of them today: One- to two-story structures
built with walls comparable in width to those created
with other methods of construction.
Even with this innovation, tiltwall construction
did not gain wide acceptance until after World War II,
when the mobile crane was first developed. The mobile
crane allowed builders far greater ability to lift the
massive panels into place, regardless where the job
site happened to be. At about this time, ready-mix concrete
was introduced to the industry, making tiltwall an even
more viable alternative.
These new technologies occurred at precisely
the right time. The late 1940s brought about a post-war
boom in the construction of manufacturing and industrial
facilities across the United States. Innovation, timing,
and the need for large, warehouse-styled buildings opened
the door for tiltwall construction. The three factors
combined to encourage general contractors to embrace
tiltwall as an economical means of delivering quality
projects that meet even the most demanding specifications
and schedules.
Over the years, industry experts have
continued to refine and enhance the tiltwall process,
allowing general contractors and design-build construction
managers to drive greater capabilities and creativity
in its use. In 1986 the Tilt-up Concrete Association
(TCA) was created to establish processes and standards
to ensure continued growth in quality and acceptance
for this method of construction.
Tiltwall has since been used in buildings
as large as 1.7 million square feet, with individual
panels reaching as high as 91 feet and weighing 150
tons. The TCA reports that 15% of all industrial buildings
in the U.S. were created using tiltwall construction.
It is growing at an annual rate of almost 20% and is
used in over 650 million square feet of new building
construction each year. In Texas and other sunbelt states,
tiltwall accounts for as much as 75% of new one-story
commercial building construction. Builders in Mexico,
Canada and Australia are also using tiltwall construction
on an increasingly frequent basis.
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