Surely you have heard about such material as polystyrene concrete. A more adapted name is warm concrete. We learn more about its composition, characteristics, application, advantages and disadvantages.
Warm concrete - what is it?
Warm (polystyrene concrete) concrete is a type of concrete mixture with expanded polystyrene foam granules that improve both the strength and thermal characteristics of the material. Also called warm concrete is the type of this material containing a number of additives that do not allow it to harden at sub-zero temperatures from the manufacturing process right up to the application itself.
The components of polystyrene concrete provide unnecessary additional insulation of the room. The composition of warm concrete is as follows:
- Portland cement.
- Water.
- Foamed polystyrene (expanded polystyrene, the price of which is relatively low) in granules.
- Wood-saponified resin (air-entraining inclusion).
The price of expanded polystyrene varies from 900-1200 rubles per 5 m 2 (a set of several plates). Why inclusion of it in concrete is not costly.
Material application
The traditional use of warm concrete is as follows:
- The construction of residential buildings.
- Monolithic housing construction.
- Sound and heat insulation of floors, ceilings, walls and plates.
- Warming of buildings and structures.
Also, the material is successfully used as a non-standard solution for:
- Filling Spaces:
- The construction of fences, fences.
- Filling the internal cavity of the grillage.
- Filling the enclosing structure in the form of walls of the house.
- Weight reduction on any design:
- In the construction of pools.
- When arranging the floors of floating houses.
- When using a load-bearing corrugated board as a ceiling , it is filled with polystyrene concrete from the inside.
- In cases when hygroscopicity of the material is necessary (does not crack under the pressure of linear loads).
- When you need to equip an inclined floor layer in a floating structure, which helps to reduce the total load on the entire structure.
The most widely used in construction are concrete blocks with a density of 200-600 kg / m 3 . The scope of their use directly depends on this characteristic:
- 450-600 - enclosing and supporting structures in low-rise buildings.
- 400-600 - external load-bearing walls in low-rise construction.
- 300-350 - curtain walls.
- 200-300 - are used only in the role of insulation material.
Material benefits
We list the main advantages of warm concrete:
- Soundproofing and heat-insulating qualities of the material are several times higher than that of ordinary concrete. This allows you not to deal with additional insulation with mineral wool, foam glass, polystyrene and so on.
- Warm concrete is a very economical material for the reason that it performs several functions at once.
- Polystyrene concrete has a mass several times smaller than ordinary concrete, which greatly facilitates loading / unloading, transportation.
- The mass load of the warm concrete structure is also less than the standard, which reduces the cost of building the foundation.
- The simplicity of processing the material can be compared with wood: it is easy to saw, drill, hammer nails into it.
- Environmentally friendly material - consists of water, concrete and expanded polystyrene.
- The water absorption of the material is the average between foam concrete and ordinary concrete.
- Another advantage comes from the previous paragraph - high frost resistance.
- Low vapor permeability.
Disadvantages of polystyrene concrete
The material also has a number of disadvantages:
- Fixing materials in its thickness do not hold firmly.
- The low density of the material affects the quality of the installation of windows and doors - over time, they begin to loosen.
- Valuable properties of the material depend on the quality of its base - concrete.
- Plaster does not adhere well to warm concrete, which is why the surface needs to be additionally prepared before plastering.
- By shrinkage, it overtakes both foam and aerated concrete three times - 1 mm / m.
- Blocks of material are not considered flammable, but at the same time they are not fire resistant. This means that under the influence of high temperatures expanded polystyrene granules burst, which subsequently leads to a loss of thermal insulation qualities.
We examined the main characteristics of one of the modern materials - warm concrete with the addition of polystyrene balls. Like all other concrete mixtures, it is endowed with a mass of advantages and disadvantages.