Concrete is a blend of cement, aggregates, and water. Cement and water create a sort of paste which hardens and bonds the aggregates together. Essentially, concrete happens to be the most extensively used building material in the entire world. Indeed, in America alone, concrete is made use of two times as much as all other alternative construction materials combined. This state of affairs is largely thanks to the numerous desirable properties of concrete. Here are the 4 main properties of this Concrete contractors Kansas City building material.
#1 – Compressive strength of concrete
The compression strength of this construction material is defined as the strength of its hardened state that is measured by the compression test. Generally speaking, the compressive strength of concrete is its capacity to resist loads and is calculated by its failure load / the cross-section area which resists the load. This calculation is tabulated in pounds / square inch (PSI) or megapascals (MPA). The compression strength requirements of concrete tend to vary from 2,500 PSI (17MPA) to 4,000 PSI (28MPA) for residential building use. It is also important to note concrete achieves its strength over the passage of time. Plain concrete gains between 90% to 95% of its final strength over the course of a year. The degree of compressive strength this construction material bears may be customized to meet the unique requirements of construction projects by altering the ration of cement, water, and aggregates.
#2 – Durability of concrete
Concrete’s unyielding characteristics produce a remarkably durable and long-lasting building material. Concrete can effortlessly resist erosion, weathering, rusting, rotting, and even fire. This definitely means when it is properly mixed and cured, it necessitates very little maintenance and repairs with the passage of time. Also, concrete possesses a long lifespan which exceeds most other alternative construction materials (over 100 years).
#3 – Versatility of concrete
Since time immemorial, concrete has proved its immense flexibility. Its impressive versatility makes it a suitable building material for a variety of applications. To this end, concrete is frequently used to construct roads, highways, driveways, garages, patios, pathways to mention but a few. At the same time, this popular construction material can be mixed to achieve varying degrees of strength to seamlessly suit diverse applications from the smallest garden path to the biggest highway. Concrete may as well assume any shape and can even be cut into many sizes that presents unlimited design possibilities.
#4 – Concrete is an economical construction material
Operational energy requirements normally account for 85% of the total energy a house makes use of during its service life. Concrete offers one of the most efficacious means of building energy-efficient structures among construction materials. A sustainable structure built with this building material will yield more than 20% of the overall construction cost of a building in the context of lifecycle savings. A large majority of these savings are attributable to concrete’s thermal mass that can harvest energy from natural sources. While also capturing thermal energy from lighting fixtures along with other equipment in a home.