CONECT d.o.o., Velenje

PETER CEH ORODJARSTVO s.p. Sostanj

PLASTIC CONNECTOR FOR GLASS BLOCKS

The subject of the invention is a plastic connector for construction of indoor and outdoor walls made of glass blocks.

The problem, which is being solved with the present invention, is stable, safe and quick building of the walls with glass blocks, which is enabled by an inventive design of a plastic connector for horizontal and vertical reinforcement of the wall made of glass blocks and a unique solution for automatic adjustment of blocks during the construction.

For building of walls made of glass blocks, plastic spacers in various versions are already being used. The currently known spacers are made according to U.S. patents 4,774,793; 5,119,567; 5,146,725; 5,191,718; 5,224,314 and 4,114,337. They all have the same characteristic, i.e. they are primarily being used to solve the problem of uniform distance between the glass blocks, horizontally and vertically. Their use however does not enable adequate reinforcement of the walls and automatic alignment of the outer edges of the glass blocks during construction. This problem is solved by plastic connector, which enables higher efficiency and better quality of construction with glass blocks.

Enclosed drawings show the mentioned connector and proposed solutions, which are subject to this invention.

Fig. 1 Three-dimensional drawing of the plastic connector Fig. 2 Side view of the plastic connector

The plastic connector is made of two parallel crosses. Each cross has horizontal (1) and vertical (2) shank, which enable uniform horizontal and vertical distance between the glass blocks. The two crosses are interconnected with connecting element (3) which connects the centres of both crosses. The plastic connector is of monolite version.

On the connecting element (3) there are three grooves (4) on the top, for placing the steel rods for horizontal reinforcement. The three grooves allow optional reinforcement of the wall , as required by static calculations. The steel rods are placed into the grooves along the length of the wall in equal intervals, thus guaranteeing constant structural strength of the wall. If there were no grooves, when applying mortar to the glass blocks, the steel rods would move toward the edge or toward the centre of the glass blocks and the spacing between the steel rods may vary horizontally alongside the installed glass blocks. This will impair the stability of the constructed wall and cause disproportion between the costs of steel rods and the quality level of reinforcement. Moreover, the grooves (4) enable the connection element (3) to have the same horizontal distance of steel rods from the top surface of the glass blocks, which further on enables good penetration of the mortar between the glass blocks and the steel rods and prevents direct contact between the steel rods and the glass surface, which could impair the reinforcement efficiency. The optimum stability of the glass block wall is enabled by high quality reinforcement, which depends on good wrapping of the steel rods with mortar.

On both sides of the connection element (3) there are two grooves (5) on the centre part of the crosses used for positioning the steel rods for vertical reinforcement. Uniform distance between the steel rods along the vertical line is assured. Positioning is simple, by slightly pressing the steel rod into the groove and the rod is fixed, so there is no problem during construction.

On each side of the plastic connector there is a plate (6), which is fixed to the horizontal shanks (1) of the crosses, with double T joints, which enable the plate to be easily removed. The plate is used to align the corners of the glass blocks on both sides of the wall, assuring levelled surface. In general, the glass blocks are very seldom uniformly thick, the existing plastic spacers cannot solve this problem without impairing the quality and progressing of construction. This problem is solved by the plastic connection with a special design (7) on the lower part of the connection element (3) which by means of expansion automatically aligns the corners of the glass blocks of various thickness thus assuring even surfaces without having to use various alignment accessories. This speeds up the construction substantially. The proposed solution enables alignment of glass blocks, with the thickness tolerance of up to +/- 1,5 mm.