3 ms·

Thanks. Yeah, I've poured a few slabs and built a few walls, but construction engineering is waaay out of my normal competencies, so I appreciate the vocabulary

by eszed 3y ago

Thanks. Yeah, I've poured a few slabs and built a few walls, but construction engineering is waaay out of my normal competencies, so I appreciate the vocabulary corrections. You say "aggregate shape doesn't count for bugger all". So why does river / crushed sand work, and desert sand doesn't? It sounds more like there are different aggregate mixes / types of aggregate material that work for particular applications (hadn't thought that through, but it makes perfect sense), and that "rough" sand is better for the most-common concrete use-cases. Do you know of specific types of concrete where "smooth" sand would be preferred?

gtvwill 3y ago
Someone covers it further down. There's a whole bunch more to the strength of concrete than the aggregate. Man last major concreting I did smooth sand would have been awesome. We were already trying to use the finest grade sand we could find. It was on mad max 4. Making concrete not look like concrete (think underwater caverns, cliffs, waterfalls). So smooth is awesome, makes it easy to texture to look like different types of weathered rock. All the structural strength was from steel rebar with chook mesh wired to it. The crete and scratch coats were about 100mm thick at the most.