Form assemblies for pouring concrete walls, and brick seats are well known. Typically, a form assembly includes a pair of forms spaced apart and linked by form ties. Liquid concrete is poured between the forms and allowed to cure or harden, thereby forming a concrete wall. The thickness of the concrete walls can be adjusted by the selection and utilization of form ties of appropriate length. Typical forms are constructed of plywood, steel or aluminum and are stripped from the concrete wall after the concrete has cured.
Typically, prefabricated form components are used in the construction of a form assembly. Generally, it is understood by those skilled in the art that the size of the form component used to construct form assemblies vary depending on the application for which the form assembly will be used.
In conventional concrete wall construction, the form assembly is assembled at a job site. These form assemblies are often custom-built from wooden studs sheathed with plywood for one-time use. Advantageously, on larger construction sites, reusable mobile form assemblies are used, typically ganged together and shifted as the height and length of the concrete wall is increased.
When the structure wall is irregular to present an inside corner, the form assembly to define that inside corner is often complex but more importantly, it is frequently difficult to remove the construction form from the inside corner. In other words, after the structure wall is self supporting where the construction form can be removed, the corner assembly of the form frequently has an interference fit, thereby making it difficult to remove the construction form from the structure wall. In particular, the forces created at an inside corner of a form, such as when pouring a concrete wall having a pier or a column, may be significant, thereby causing the removal of the corner assembly from the structure to be time consuming and labor intensive. In addition, constructing a structure having an inside corner generally requires several components configured together in order to achieve the desired configuration of the structure.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds