Concrete - The Primary Material of Your Home Foundation

Concrete is the primary construction material of a home foundation or a commercial foundation

. Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world. Every year more than one cubic meter of concrete is produced for every person on the planet. It is widely used for the construction of highways, buildings, bridges, water and sewage pipes, concrete blocks, poles, and many other items. Reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete are widely used in all parts of the world. Standard concrete consists of cement (often referred to as Portland cement), aggregates such as gravel and sand, and water. When these ingredients are mixed together the water and the cement begin a chemical reaction call hydration. This chemical reaction will bond or cement all of the ingredients together and result in a stone-like material that is called concrete.

Concrete can trace its history back to the Roman empire. The Romans were the first to use this revolutionary material and it aided in the construction of many Roman structures that still survive today. It was found to be far superior to the structures that will built of stone or brick. Modern tests have demonstrated that Roman concrete has a compression strength as strong as today's concrete. The Romans also experimented with the concrete by adding horsehair and other additives to improve its strength or create other properties. The secret of making Roman concrete was lost for 1300 years until 1756 when a British engineer discovered the basic formula once again.

Concrete can be fabricated in a multitude of ways to achieve a final product with specific properties. Some of the variations include varying the proportions of the ingredients, changing the basic ingredients, adding reinforcement, adding chemical admixtures, and adding mineral admixtures. Variations in the amount of water added to a concrete mixture will affect the strength of the final product. Adding more water will yield a wet mixture that is freer-flowing and easier to use in difficult applications but the final concrete will have less strength. Using less water will create a wet mixture that will yield a stronger final concrete but it will less free-flowing.

Aggregates are the bulk of the concrete mixture and usually include sand (fine aggregate), natural gravel, and crushed stone. Today more aggregates are from recycled building materials and waste materials such as blast furnace slag. Recycled aggregates are being used more frequently because they place less stress on the environment.

Concrete has a very high compression strength but a very weak tension strength. In other words, it is rigid and will support great weights but it will not bend. If bending forces are great enough the concrete will break. Concrete that is reinforced with steel bars or various types of fibers will have a higher tensile strength and can resist greater bending forces. Virtually every home foundation and commercial concrete foundation built in the past sixty years in the United States contains steel rebar for higher tensile strength.

Chemical admixtures are materials that are added to concrete mixtures to obtain a specific property. These admixtures would include materials that could speed up or slow down the hydration process for specific building requirements. Simple pigments can be added to change the color of the concrete. Plasticizers allow concrete to be "worked" or poured and placed more easily without adding any additional water. Therefore the strength and durability of the concrete can be maintained while having a wet mixture that can be easily "worked."

Recent environmental concerns have been raised about the manufacture of cement, which contributes about five percent of all carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. Roughly forty percent of these emissions are from the burning of fossil fuel to create cement. Roughly fifty percent of these emissions are from the chemical process during manufacture. Therefore cement experts are searching for alternative materials and methods to produce cement or a similar material.

Concrete - The Primary Material of Your Home Foundation

By: Martin Dawson

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