Concrete: For a Solid Foundation of Your Dream Home

You build your home with all the love and care in the world. But these are not enough to ensure that your dream creation lasts through the years to come. What does guarantee it's durability is concrete. It is this one component that can make or break your house, quite literally! From the minutest repair work in your home to the tallest skyscrapers, the right concrete mix is critical to the strength of the structure. Using the right composition of cement, water and other additives is important to create a high quality final product that can empower buildings, offices and homes to properly withstand the wrath of the weather gods. Rain water causes gradual corrosion of the exterior walls which weak concrete cannot withstand for long. Similarly, extremes temperatures are also detrimental to the life of your building. But you need not worry because a good quality concrete can prevent all this and it's not very difficult to find.

What goes into the making of concrete?

A construction material, concrete is composed of cement, other cement-like materials like fly ash and slag cement, aggregate (which is a coarse mixture of crushed limestone or granite and sand), water and other chemical mixtures. After mixing with water, the mass solidifies and hardens, having robust strength and tenability. Right from building architectural structures to even boats, concrete has a wide variety of uses. In fact, it is the most widely used man-made material in the world. Different types of concrete can be created by varying the proportion of the additives, making the finished product custom-made for a number of diverse uses with varying strength and thermal resistance properties. Though the material possesses high compressive strength, it has low tensile properties, which means that it needs to be reinforced with high-tension materials like steel.

In order to be of much use, concrete needs curing

In order to achieve the highest durability and hardness, concrete needs to be cured. Curing is a process in which after the concrete has been placed, it needs to be kept in a controlled temperature and humid environment in order for the cement paste to harden properly. The cement paste takes around 3 weeks to achieve more than 90% of its strength. To ensure that all this happens properly, concrete is periodically sprayed with water to protect it from the negative effects of the surrounding environment. Ponding is another method that is used in which the concrete is submerged in water and wrapped in plastic to retain the water in the mix. Proper curing in this manner leads to greater strength and prevents cracks from appearing, which would happen if the surface dried out prematurely.

Looking forward to building or repairing your home or office with the best available concrete? Newcastle Upon Tyne has a number of medium to large companies offering the best services.