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Concrete History and Facts

January 13th, 2023

oncrete is a powerful substance that holds together much of our residential and commercial building. Here are a few facts about concrete and how it works to make your home a living palace.

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Concrete has been used for many years to enhance Minnesota homes. Driveways, steps, patios and walkways are just some of the concrete options available to Minneapolis property owners. A concrete patio can provide you with many years of enjoyment. It can be a place of relaxation or social gatherings with a table and chairs. And the great thing about a concrete patio is that it will very rarely require any concrete repair. After years of use, it may require concrete resurfacing to bring back that old shine. Concrete contractors are available to help you with any concrete repair you may need.

Concrete driveways can be an important investment as this is the gateway to your home. A broken down asphalt or concrete driveway can cause many headaches when trying to use a snow blower during the winter in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Nobody wants a muddy driveway every time it rains. This mud can then be tracked into your home by you, your kids or your visitors. MN Concrete contractors can give you an estimate on the price of a concrete driveway. If you need concrete resurfacing or a simple concrete repair on your concrete driveway, concrete contractors will be able to help you with this project.

You may want to enhance your Minneapolis/St. Paul MN property in an artistic format by adding stamped or stained concrete. This adds a bit of flair to your concrete patio, driveway, walkway, steps, garage floor or more. There are many different designs and colors to choose from and concrete contractors will work with you to ensure the scheme you wish to have implemented gets installed correctly.

Concrete steps in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area have many added benefits over wood or other types of material. Wood can rot, become waterlogged and sink and attracts many unwanted insects. Concrete is completely waterproof and when properly installed it will last for many years with little to no maintenance. For sturdiness and reliability, you should consider concrete steps for your home.

This may be a surprise to some people but concrete and cement are not the same thing. Cement is kind of like the glue that holds all the ingredients in concrete together. A basic concrete mix consists of three components: cement, water and aggregates, which are usually rock and sand. Concrete contractors will mix all this together and pour it into the frame of your new concrete patio, concrete driveway, concrete walkway or steps.

Some benefits of concrete are that it can be waterproof, resistant to freezing and thawing, resistant to deicing and cleaning chemicals, resistant to wear and constant use and strength. These qualities are what concrete contractors try to achieve when mixing concrete for a concrete patio or other project. Concrete repair is rarely needed but occasionally if the concrete has been used by extremely heavy objects or vehicles, cracking and chipping may occur. Concrete repair may be able to be fixed with a simple patchwork but other cases may need a complete concrete resurfacing. Over time concrete can crack and break due to the earth shifting and other weather-related situations. In these cases concrete contractors will generally have to enact a concrete repair or a concrete resurfacing to bring the concrete patio or concrete driveway back up to full strength.

If you wish to add extra strength to your concrete mix, you can add wire mesh or fibers to enhance the strength and quality of the concrete. Fibers are most effective. When small cracks begin to appear, the fibers block the cracks from continuing any further and in most cases can eliminate any problem right there. Concrete contractors also use accelerants at times to speed up the drying time of concrete or retardants to slow down the drying time of concrete. These are generally used depending on the weather conditions when the concrete mix is being mixed.

So, as you can see, concrete is used to strengthen and increase the life of your home. A concrete patio, driveway, walkway, garage or shed floor, steps or other projects can all be improved by concrete. And, although it’s rare for concrete to need repair, concrete contractors are available for concrete repair and concrete resurfacing if you should need their services.

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2 Types of Concrete: Light and Heavy

October 13th, 2022

Many have heard more than once that, in addition to the usual classification by grades and classes, concrete is also endowed with a “degree of severity”. We will try to determine what light and heavy concrete are, and what are their fundamental differences.

Basic Concepts

Lightweight concrete is considered to be a building concrete mixture made of water,Guest Posting cement, sand and large porous aggregates. Due to the relatively low density, such a building material has a specific gravity of one “cube” of less than 1.8 tons. When it comes to lightweight concrete, it is worth understanding by this concept slag concrete and expanded clay concrete. Also, the category of lightweight concrete includes high-molecular products: aerated concrete, foam concrete, polystyrene concrete, and even polymer concrete. Lightweight concrete is distinguished not only by its excellent heat-generating properties and excellent porosity, but also by its most important advantage – its insignificant weight.

In turn, heavy concrete is a concrete mixture of the same cement and water. Only large (gravel, granite, limestone, diabase) and small aggregates are used in it, which significantly increases the density of the material. This allows you to achieve a specific gravity of one cube from 1.8 to 2.5 tons. At the same time, sand concrete or fine-grained concrete will be called a type of heavy concrete, where a mixture of large and small fractions of sand is used as aggregate. Some types of heavy concrete have a specific gravity of 1 cubic meter. up to 7 tons. Such concretes are called especially heavy, applying for the construction of buildings and buildings of an increased level of responsibility: nuclear reactors, nuclear power plants, etc. High density in particularly heavy concrete is achieved through the use of high molecular weight substances such as barite, hematite, magnetite, and metal scrap as fillers.

Application Area

Monolithic slabs of lightweight concrete are used to create ceramsite concrete floors, as well as in the construction of lower floors of buildings without basements. The use of such materials makes it possible to reduce heat loss in the room, significantly saving in the future on high-quality and inexpensive heating of the building. It is for this reason that lightweight concrete products are also used for attic floors. Due to the low weight of concrete products, lightweight concrete is used for monolithic high-rise buildings. At the same time, one does not have to worry about the strength of buildings – it is provided by reinforcement located in the reinforced concrete frame.

Lightweight concrete is used in the manufacture of building envelopes, as well as such masonry wall materials as expanded clay concrete, slag concrete, foam concrete and aerated concrete products. However, the reduced strength and load-bearing capacity of lightweight concrete limits their use, and therefore, lightweight concrete without metal frames and armored belts is practically not used for capital construction. However, due to the constant change in the forms and types of lightweight concrete, in the near future, scientists will probably be able to minimize the shortcomings, which will make this product one of the main building materials of the future.

Heavy concrete is used everywhere and is by far the most durable and common type of concrete. All monolithic elements of buildings and structures are made of heavy concrete. Excellent strength characteristics, unpretentiousness when feeding and laying, affordable price – all these serious advantages make heavy concrete practical and popular. Heavy concrete is less effective only for the installation of walls and light ceilings, i.e. where it is necessary to reduce heat loss due to the materials used.

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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category

Concrete History and Facts

2 Types of Concrete: Light and Heavy