James Jones & Sons Ltd says its JJI-Joist flooring systems now meet the Building Regulations’ amended Part E: Resistance to the Passage of Sound for both internal and separating (party) floors, following a comprehensive testing programme at Napier University.
The Stirlingshire-based company said the test programme, independently conducted and assessed by Professor Robin Mackenzie and Dr Sean Smith of Napier’s Building Performance Centre, took several months to complete and involved testing of numerous different JJI-Joist floor specifications for internal floors.
James Jones, which has two JJI-Joist I-beam manufacturing lines at Forres, said until recently very little work had been carried out on floors within dwellings, which have had to meet the new Part E2b requirements on all newbuild housing since July 2003.
Brian Robertson, general manager at James Jones Timber Systems Division, said: “The tests carried out using the JJI-Joist have proved that with certain depths of joist no change is required to the current method of construction.”
He said shallower depth JJI-joists just needed a change in plasterboard specification, which has no additional installation cost and only a marginal increase in cost of material.
Mr Robertson said the JJI-Joist was already covered by the House Builders Federation‘s Robust Standard Details (RSD) for party floors. The government recently announced it would permit RSDs as an alternative to pre-completion testing for demonstrating compliance of party walls and floors with Part E.
James Jones & Sons says it is undertaking further research and development in conjunction with Napier in order to provide innovative solutions to the housebuilding industry.
