SEARCH RESULTS FOR “Strength”

Con­crete is a ver­sa­tile and durable con­struc­tion mate­r­i­al that is pre­dom­i­nant­ly used in both com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial struc­tures. It’s essen­tial to under­stand con­crete’s ther­mal prop­er­ties, specif­i­cal­ly its tem­per­a­ture lim­its, to opti­mize its strength and dura­bil­i­ty.

The foun­da­tion is fun­da­men­tal to the longevi­ty, strength, and struc­tur­al sound­ness of a house. Home­own­ers and pro­fes­sion­als often ask, ​“Which foun­da­tion is the most effec­tive for a house?” Find out here!

Depend­ing on the forms’ size and the con­crete core width, the con­crete aggre­gate size and slump should be adjust­ed accord­ing­ly. The ulti­mate goal is to get the cor­rect com­pres­sive strength for the con­crete as spec­i­fied.

An ICF home, like one built with Fox Blocks, pro­vides many of the essen­tial fea­tures that today’s home­own­er is look­ing for: excel­lent indoor envi­ron­men­tal qual­i­ty (IEQ), ener­gy-effi­cien­cy, and dis­as­ter-resis­tance.

The con­crete is nor­mal strength, min­i­mum 2500 psi (20 MPa) per build­ing codes. The mix design spec­i­fies a small­er aggre­gate and high­er slump than con­crete typ­i­cal­ly used for floors. Most Ready-Mix sup­pli­ers are famil­iar with an ICF con­crete mix design.

I had a call this week from a con­trac­tor who want­ed to know if there was an easy way to build a two foot jog into a wall. This brought back flash­backs of when I used to attempt to inter­lock cor­ners think­ing the strength of the inter­lock was going to hold things togeth­er dur­ing con­crete place­ment.

ICF con­struc­tion for com­mer­cial build­ings has sky­rock­et­ed over the past few years. ICF ben­e­fits rang­ing from sound insu­la­tion to dura­bil­i­ty to build­ing strength and dis­as­ter resis­tance have piqued a lot of inter­est for builders and archi­tects. But it has some scratch­ing their heads, mis­tak­en­ly think­ing ICF is more expen­sive and then won­der­ing, ​“Is ICF con­struc­tion cost worth it?”

No. Spec­i­fi­ca­tions in the Amer­i­ca Con­crete Insti­tute (ACI) do not lim­it the max­i­mum dis­tance con­crete can free fall. Engi­neer­ing stud­ies and reports have shown that free fall from up to 35′ doesn’t reduce con­crete qual­i­ty and there is no evi­dence of seg­re­ga­tion or weak­ened con­crete strength. ICF con­crete design calls for a high slump mix which assists in reduc­ing seg­re­ga­tion.

Prop­er con­crete mix saves time on labor, facil­i­tates con­crete con­sol­i­da­tion and ensures a suc­cess­ful Fox Blocks wall pour.