Advantages of Unitized Curtain Wall

There are a lot of advantages of using unitised curtain walls, especially for highrise buildings today. In curtain wall construction, lots of people prefer unitized curtain wall in building projects, such as faster production and installation, and etc. All the fabrication and assembly operations are in a controlled environment.

Specifically speaking, the distinctive advantage of unitised curtain walls is the efficiency of repetitive units and their installation. In other words, once an assembly process is optimised off-site, the time saved on-site is significantly higher than a stick construction. Another decisive factor is the higher quality assurance due to fewer interfaces and workmanship on-site. Working at heights is moved to the inside of the building slab, and interior wall assemblies can be easily integrated. In that regard, people prefer unitised curtain wall in their building projects much more. Of course, it will always be the first discussion if a stick curtain wall is equally suitable, especially when it comes to building movement joints.

In practical construction projects, unitised curtain wall system is better in accommodating movement joints and is more flexible during construction. For some large building construction projects, the different components of the unitized curtain wall arrive at the facilities after a previous QA/QC process that reduces the possibilities of defects and mistakes on the assembly. Continuous quality checks are performed during the curtain wall assembly to ensure the performance and quality of the final product. These days, with a higher curtain wall price, the preassembly of curtain wall units allows developing more complex and performing curtain walls such as “active walls of close cavity facades” with improved performance.

In addition, another most evident advantage of the unitised curtain wall is the speed and ease of installation. Typically a unitised system is installed around the same floor, which gives the chance to the other parties to work on the inside of the buildings during the installation of the curtain wall facade. This facilitates all the other works like MEP or internal linings. If you would like to use structural glass curtain wall for you building in future, another distinctive advantage of unitised systems is that, unlike stick-built systems, they do not transfer impact noises from floor to floor or horizontally from room to room in applications. This is because the unitised panels are separated by linking gaskets. And different materials ie, gasket to aluminium, become acoustically excited to different levels, thus creating full separation at the junctions between units.