The Pin Yard

Located in the city’s Holbeck Urban Village area, the Pin Yard is an 11-storey property comprising 216 high-quality one-to-three-bedroom rental homes. The £34m development has much to recommend it. The city centre is a short 10-minute walk away, where the popular Trinity Leeds shopping centre resides with its array of attractive retail, leisure, and hospitality amenities await. The Pin Yard itself is host to a range of spaces to enhance occupants’ living experience. A resident’s lounge, co-working areas, a gym, and an outdoor courtyard are contained within the site, which also includes an attractive events space.

The sheer volume of support units (more than 750) required for the Pin Yard project provided an initial challenge for IG Masonry Support’s team, as each one needed to be designed individually to ensure its precise compatibility with its building location.  Although this aspect of the project was time-consuming, the units needed to be supplied as a matter of urgency. The contractor was working to a strict completion deadline, thus any delay to the works programme jeopardised the building handover date.

IG Masonry Support’s Dropper Welded Masonry Support was designed and manufactured to suit a 108mm cavity when fixing to steel. In terms of its Masonry Support Corners, these included thermal shims, bolts, lock washers, and nuts. To ensure each support unit met the build’s wider requirements, IG Masonry Support worked on their design in collaboration with structural engineers, Met Structures. This close working relationship continued throughout the installation and build process.

The welded masonry and the support corner units were fixed to wing plates for each of the building’s 11 floors. For this task, each floor was split into two due to the project’s size. With time of the essence and a large building area to cover, the ease with which IG Masonry Support’s Welded Masonry Support systems were installed proved vital. This outcome was ably assisted by IG Masonry Support’s design skills – in conjunction with Met Structures – in facilitating the units’ perfect fit to each building location.

IG Masonry Support’s collaborative approach to this project included liaising with the contractor to coordinate product delivery times. It meant masonry support units were supplied to each floor of the building as required and in line with agreed timescales. This method ensured spare materials were not left about the site to potentially cause a health and safety hazard.

With the specification of such a huge array of different-sized masonry support units for this project, this potentially complex process was simplified for the main contractor and installer due to IG Masonry Support’s involvement as the units’ sole designer and manufacturer. This ‘one-stop-shop’ provision enabled closer working ties between the on-off site teams and created a single point of reference for any enquires regarding the stainless steel, non-corrosive masonry support solutions. The Masonry Support Corners’ thermal shim provided an additional beneficial outcome; its performance being paramount to preventing instances of thermal bridging to enhance the project’s sustainability.

As an indication of the task undertaken by IG Masonry Support on this project, on a typical build of this scale circa 12-to-14 different masonry support unit types are installed on each building level. IG Masonry Support exceeded this number by several hundred, which is why this company remains the go-to masonry support provider for building projects of all sizes and profiles.