Concrete is one of the world’s most widely-used building materials, making an understanding of its fundamentals essential for successful projects, whether you are an experienced construction professional or simply doing DIY home projects around your house. Knowing this material’s properties will make your next endeavor much smoother.
This guide offers concrete producers, cement manufacturers, contractors, designers and engineers a practical overview of solutions to reduce carbon embodied emissions without impacting material performance.
Types
Concreting Melbourne is one of the world’s most frequently utilized building materials, thanks to its durability, affordability and versatility. Concrete can be found everywhere from roads and railway tracks to bridges, buildings parking lots malls and even jet plane runways worldwide. Concrete also stands up well against natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, giving you peace of mind while you build with it.
Concrete comes in various forms and the right choice will depend on what kind of construction project is underway. Plain concrete works well for pavements and areas without high tensile strength requirements while reinforced concrete is best used in beams, columns and walls.
Precast concrete offers a quick solution to projects with short deadlines, as it can be made at a factory and transported directly to its construction site ready to use. Furthermore, precast is highly durable – even resisting fire and impact damage!
Mixing
Concrete is a mix of aggregates (rocks, sand and gravel), cement and water which, once mixed together, hardens to form stone-like material. Concrete can be used in many applications from home improvement projects to large field buildings and structures.
Mixing concrete requires carefully proportioned ingredients that blend thoroughly together for success. Hydration of the cement determines its strength and durability in concrete mixes, so proper proportioning is of great significance to their success.
Slump testing is the easiest and simplest way to evaluate hydration levels of concrete mixes. To conduct it, shape a small amount of concrete into a cone before tipping onto a flat surface and observing how much height has been lost over time – if less than half has disappeared from its height then your mix may be ready for use, otherwise additional water must be added.
Placement
No matter whether the concrete is placed by buggies, hoppers, cars or by hand shoveling it – its handling should minimize segregation and direct placement as close to its final position as possible. When this is not practical a suitable drop and Elephant Trunk should be used to restrict movement of concrete while its temperature should be monitored so as to provide protection from ambient conditions.
Once the concrete has been placed, a bull float is used to press down aggregate and assist cream (gravel-free) concrete from rising to the surface. Once screeded smooth, a magnesium hand float may then be used to add traction onto it to help prevent slippery wet conditions from damaging it further.
Finishing
Workers then smooth and finish the concrete to give it its final appearance, an essential step for project success since concrete needs time to dry and reach full strength before being used in any applications.
Broom finish concrete surfaces are among the most widely-used finishes available today, providing grip control and slip resistance while concealing any imperfections better than smooth surfaces would.
Once the broom finish is complete, trowel the concrete to give it an even and smooth surface. Be wary when troweling to avoid burning it. Burned concrete happens when builders use too much force when employing steel trowels over repeated passes over concrete surface with too much pressure exerted upon it; this may weaken and discolor it over time.
Next, use a hand trowel to finish the edges of the concrete with a rounding tool so as to avoid chipping and breakage in the future. Finally, install contraction joints at strategic points around your yard so as to prevent cracking from occurring.