ai030526.xml

Your first thought might be that mast climbers can only be used on vertical surfaces, but angled walls are today not an obstacle. With careful planning, modern mast climbers can be used on almost any building, as illustrated. Hek mastclimbers were used to install the facade elements on a new 45 m (148 ft) building in Groningen in the Netherlands by contractor Van Dool Gevelbekleding. Every 15 m (49 ft) the angle of the facade changes to either vertical, 13° inward slope or 13° outward slope. At each stage, all four facades change and the leaning sections have a 3.8 m variance from top to bottom. Mastclimbers from Hek provided access in defined stages for each of the sections of facade. Although considerably more installation and dismantling work was required (each platform had to be reinstalled five times), bottom line costings showed that this approach still provided the most cost-effective solution.