What You Need to Know About Cement Quality Cement is an essential component of concrete and mortar. It is an important building material found in sidewalks, structures, and roads throughout the world. Cement is critical to the extent that if it is of low-quality cracks, premature failure, and an unsafe project will be the result. However, high-quality cement will prevent the aforementioned issues and make structures durable, strong, and safe for a long time.
What you need to know about Concrete Most time, people mistakenly use the term mortar, concrete, and cement interchangeably. Mortar is a combination of a fine aggregate and cement. It is usually used for bonding bricks or other components in structural applications. However, concrete is a composite material, which is formed by mixing aggregates like crushed stone, gravel, sand, water, and cement. Though hardly used on its own, cement is a binder that hardens and sets. Nevertheless, when cement is mixed with aggregates, it forms mortar or concrete and used in binding other materials. Cement is more of a generic term, which refers to one of many distinct formulations. You may have heard of Portland cement but didn’t know what its constituents are. Well, Portland cement is a combination of calcium, silicon, aluminum, and iron oxide materials. Today, it is the common cement for concrete applications today. However, there are other types of cement such as carbon bond, calcium aluminate, polymer bond, slag, phosphate, epoxy, and much more.
Different Cement Grade Ordinary Portland cement (OPC) comes in different standard grades, which can be specified when buying. For general construction jobs in normal environmental conditions, the best option is 33 Grade OPC. However, 43 Grade OPC is used primarily for foundations, brickwork, plastering, and compound walls in home construction. The last grade, which is the 53 grade OPC, offers durability and high strength for structures such as concrete roads, runways, bridges, skyscrapers, and heavy-duty constructions.