LIVING IN A QUALITY HOUSE

The House: a place to live in

A house is the place where one grows up, that belongs to the family and where one creates one’s roots. It is the place where an entire life is lived. The image of a “cosy nest’ often used by its occupants illustrates well the importance of a habitation that is your own, a refuge and a place to share.

RECTOR for your house

For serving you, RECTOR is committed to designing the best constructive solutions by guarantying the optimum quality of its products, whose performances are tested and certified. An essential step that enables you to build a comfortable, strong and durable house.

LIVING IN A QUALITY HOUSE

RECTOR, a reputed brand name

RECTOR is helping its customers accomplish their projects since 1953 and has become one of the major players in the market for the fabrication of concrete materials. With a production in excess of 400 million linear metres of joists (equivalent to approximately 200 million square metres of floor), the RECTOR range enjoys a wide success and today, over 6 million people are “supported” by floors made by RECTOR.

The production of a concrete floor requires considerable know-how. This assembly is composed of innovative components whose performance has undergone significant improvement in recent years:

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  The joist: load bearing unit of a concrete floor. It may be made of prestressed concrete
• The interjoist: structural unit for filling the space between the joists by means of masonry elements called flooring blocks. The interjoists may be made of concrete, PSE (expanded polystyrene) or moulded wood (Rectolight). They are used as formwork support (and as insulation, in some cases) for building the compression table.
• The thermal bridge breaker: the thermal bridges mark breaks in the insulation of your house. The thermal bridge breaker is an insulating part that is placed between the floor and the wall.
• Floor bearing beams: load bearing unit that replaces a wall, on which a floor can be supported (example: Stringer, RECTOR stock beam)

Your house may be built over an underfloor space or on solid ground. This choice is vital for the durability of your house. Its quality may suffer if it is built on unsuitable bases.

What is an underfloor space?
In buildings without a basement, the underfloor space is a volume provided between the lower floor of the ground level and the natural ground, whose role is to insulate this floor from the ground and prevent the rising of humidity. All underfloor spaces have at their periphery some holes with grill for a moderate ventilation. This technique offers numerous advantages compared with solid ground.

QUALITY AND DURABILITY

Your new house is a long-term investment and a significant part of your financial and emotional legacy. In this perspective, the value of your property must be preserved so that you can enjoy it during many years and obtain a high resale value for transmission to future generations. In addition, the cost of maintaining it should be as low as possible.

A durable material: concrete

- For reinforcing the structural elements of your house, RECTOR has chosen a durable material: the concrete, unanimously recognised as efficient and resistant to physical and chemical aggressions, climatic variations, organic aggressions…

- Unlike other materials, concrete maintains all its properties during the course of time. It does not require any maintenance, upkeep, replacement or any specific treatment.

- For your safety and for protecting your house, the alliance of the concrete material properties and the product characteristics offers and excellent level of resistance to fire and seismic risks.

Rector products keep up their initial performances (fire safety, thermal insulation, waterproofing) during the course of time.

RECTOR: a guaranteed quality

- Rector offers quality products: our products in concrete are manufactures in our plants according to tested and controlled processes, integrating a high level of traceability and made of high quality raw materials. The Rector products are cast, ensuring the conformity of shapes and dimensions. In the moulds, the products acquire their final strength slowly and progressively.

- The Rector products are certified under the control of independent organisations, ensuring their conformity, the quality of raw materials as well as their compliance with regulations. They are products that have to be chosen in priority for houses enjoying the NF certification.

Solutions complying with regulations in force

The Rector products comply with all applicable regulations:

- CPT (technical prescriptions sheet) for joist floors

- Thermal regulations

- Seismic regulations

- Fire regulations

- Eurocodes (European standards)

For a durable construction

Being durable and of good quality, the Rector solutions contribute to preserving the value of your house.

WELLBEING AND COMFORT

A comfortable architecture

• The Rector range allows you complete freedom in the architecture of your projects thanks to its standardised products, available in all dimensions.
• The Rector range optimises the space available for living: high performance of the structural elements due to optimisation of dimensions (beam drop, thickness of insulation).
• The column-beam structure offers great freedom in the layout (and future modifications) of the living space.
• The Rector flat beam (PPR), entirely concealed in the plenum of the suspended ceiling; is an ideal solution for designing new spaces with ceilings without drop.
• In the basements, the optimisation of the insulation thickness preserves the available height.

Aesthetic appearance

Traditionally, the structural elements are not quite visible. In the basements and ceilings of garages, Rector therefore proposes floor undersides that are both strong and good-looking.

Underside of a light RECTOLIGHT floor	Underside of a RECTOSTEN Décor insulating floor

Comfort

• RECTOR products offer you the best thermal solutions guarantying a high level of comfort. Insulated floors and thermal bridge breakers eliminate the main sources of heat loss.
• Concrete walls are recognised as a factor of hygrothermal comfort in housing thanks to their thermal inertia. They keep the house warm or cool according to season.
• Acoustic insulation is also integrated. The mass of concrete floors contributes significantly to the attenuation of the different noises. They are recommended for separating the day and night parts of your house and creating a calm and peaceful environment.
• The RECTOR solutions are also designed taking into consideration the safety both of the building and of the persons.

Health

Radon is a natural and carcinogenic gas emitted from the soil. It concentrates in dwellings in contact with the ground, when the house is poorly ventilated. For safeguarding your health and the health of your family, Rector recommends that you should build your house on an underfloor space with air circulation. Your house is thus better ventilated and the radon is evacuated.

In the interest of your health, you must preserve your house from humidity. You can prevent the fallout from humidity originating from the ground through the “air mattress” created by constructing the house over an underfloor space. In addition, this technique, by raising the house, protects it against minor flooding and variations of the water table.

Rector products are guaranteed free of components harmful to health: no release of toxic gases, no VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) and no asbestos. They are based on the principle of respect for the environment as well as improvement of the indoor air quality

ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY

Since a long time, Rector has a conduct respecting our environment.

• For designing and manufacturing its products, Rector does not use “rare” natural resources
  
• Rector products require very little packaging
• The beams and floors have FDES datasheets (Environmental and Sanitary Declaration Form). These datasheets, prepared based on a standard methodology, show that the Rector concrete products consume relatively little raw materials, water and energy, throughout their life cycle.
  
• The particularly careful design of the products, allows a rapid installation, reducing the nuisances arising from the building site.
  
• As part of its policy of customer proximity, Rector manufacturing facilities are located all over France, as close as possible to the building sites, so as to avoid polluting mass transports.
• Rector participates in local life by proposing stable jobs with little likelihood of being outsourced, accompanied by an active policy of training for personnel and youth.
  
  

Our objective: help you save energy.

How? By optimising the thermal insulation of your house through the use of insulated floors from the IPSEO range. They are adapted to all levels and types of heat loss. A large variety of IPSEO components ensure that the insulation is uninterrupted both horizontally and vertically. The combination of its different components contributes to the global energy performance of your house.

Thermal insulation from the ground is provided on the surface by Rectosten floors, or by implementing, if necessary, a floating floor screed (in the case of heated floors). Thermal bridges at the wall-floor junctions are greatly reduced by the use of thermal bridge breakers.

Installation of thermal bridge breakers on the storey floor	Underfloor space with insulated floor and thermal bridge breakers

Measured and guaranteed performance

The performance is guaranteed by the technical reports and the certificates of the components belonging to the IPSEO range. Moreover, the insulation value of the Rectosten interjoists is visible on the underside, a feature particularly useful during all phases of the project execution for ensuring that the products installed correspond to those specified.

BUILDING ON AN UNDERFLOOR SPACE

Why build on an underfloor space rather than on solid ground?

Incontestable advantages

The quality is guaranteed…

> Contrary to the solid ground, the underfloor space saves you the need for extensive earthworks. A simple stripping is sufficient, whatever the configuration your ground.

> When you use an underfloor space, there is no need to worry about the choice of materials or the proper execution of the works!

> An underfloor space is easy to execute using products of conforming and constant quality. Its success is without surprise.

Assured comfort

> Health of habitants

Your house is a living space that has to last. The radon gas could cause health risks. This gas released from the soil is a known carcinogen. Building on solid ground means an inadequate ventilation of the house, leading to an increased concentration of this harmful gas. The underfloor space allows an extraction of the air towards the outside. The radon is then directly evacuated from the ground towards the outside. It is the reason why a construction over an underfloor space is the recommended practice in areas with a high concentration of radon.

> Later modifications

The construction of your house, being a long-term investment, must not compromise your future plans. It is not possible to envisage future modifications of a construction on solid ground. On the other hand, construction on an underfloor space allows you to change or improve the utility network, create a cellar or carry out other modifications without any difficulty.

A good quality house is also long lasting

> Maintenance of utility lines

The maintenance of utility lines may become necessary during the lifecycle of your house. In the case of a construction on solid ground, the lines are embedded in the slab. You have to be careful in order to prevent disorders because the slightest operation involves major works and significant costs. On the other hand, with a free passage through the underfloor space, the utility lines can be easily accessed for maintenance.

> The type of ground has no effect

Your house must preserve its initial value. It should not develop cracks. This risk is reduced considerably by building your house on an underfloor space. Construction on a solid ground requires a hard, homogenous, stable and well drained ground. Without this, after heavy rain or drought, the soil may suffer from swelling or shrinking phenomena. As a consequence, differential subsidence can deform the slab and cause cracks in the tiles, resulting in your house losing its value. On the other hand, an underfloor space can be built on all types of ground. Your house will have a solid independent structure. It can thus efficiently resist differential subsidence. Your house is thus better protected against the development of cracks.