A circular Cablenet tension wire grid system was installed at the Roundhouse in Camden as part of a 29.7 million refurbishment project. The Cablenet installation for this project is doughnut shaped with no intermediate supports.
The most exacting engineering element of the project was ensuring that the inner and outer ring beams up in the roof were strong enough to absorb the tension loadings of the cable assemblies, and designing them to be robust enough to suspend the grid frame from tie bars connected to the roof support structure.
- No support struts between inner and outer frames
- Outside diameter ring beam 14.3 metres
- Inside diameter 3 metres
- Total grid area 147 square metres
- Woven in 4mm wire
The tension wire grid frame was assembled on the Roundhouse floor and lifted into its final location using nine 1.5 tonne chain blocks – in a delicate operation overseen by the Slingco installation team. It took a day to lift and fix the grid into its final position at its full height of 12 metres. This was a really tricky process as the grid needed to be picked up and raised, millimetre perfect, in exactly the right position in relation to the support steelwork and pre-positioned hanger locations.
Alignment was achieved using plumb lines, probably the same methodology that the Victorians would have used!
