Facade regulations
Introduction
A façade maintenance gondola is a suspended platform, intended to be installed permanently and dedicated to solving access to the facades of buildings. Gondolas are made up of a platform that suspends from a structure provided with different movements, to access all points of the façade of a building, to carry out maintenance and cleaning work.[1].
The gondola or B.M.U. (Building Maintenance Unit) is very useful and effective when it comes to maintaining facades with great vertical travel or height, given that its designs and characteristics are personalized, according to the needs of the building in question for which they have been designed, manufactured and installed.
The standard that regulates gondolas for facade maintenance is the European standard UNE EN 1808:2016[2] which specifies the safety requirements for variable level suspended platforms (SAE). This European Standard specifies the design calculation, stability criteria, construction criteria, requirements, test methods, marking and information that must be provided by the manufacturer/supplier of variable level suspended platforms.
Gondolas for facade maintenance are composed of a suspension structure and a platform suspended from said structure.
Types of suspension structures
As suspension structures we can find:
1) Roof cart or Building maintenance unit, BMU.
It is a machine that is located on the roof of the building that is to be maintained and has a lifting system from which a suspension platform is suspended. This lifting system allows the platform to be raised or lowered safely. In addition, all lifting systems have an emergency braking system that fixes the platform in a fixed position and prevents its descent (this safety system is required by the UNE EN 1808:2016[2] standard).
The BMUs can be fixed and fixed to the deck or they can be mobile and move throughout the deck using guides or completely freely. In the case of mobile BMUs, they can roll on a rail made of metal profiles, they can roll along the concrete of the roof guided by a metal profile or they can roll along the roof with total freedom as long as they have detection devices that prevent them from hitting other objects.
A BMU usually consists of the wheels, the frame, the mast(s), the machinery box, the counterweight box, the boom(s), the two-boom head and the suspension platform.