Search using the fields below to find a project.
St. Marys Cement has been producing cementitious materials at their six manufacturing plants for decades. Recently, however, the team at the company’s Bowmanville plant saw the need for a new unheated alternative fuels building. Working together with the Barry Bryan Associates team, they drew up a design for it.
During its creation, the design team acknowledged that the concrete floor would be exposed to heavy industrial work, which could cause significant abrasive wear, reduce load-carrying capacity, and create a loss of riding surface. To prevent that from happening, they searched for a concrete hardening solution that would be compatible with the air-entrained concrete mix they had already specified.
Their search ended when they found Hard-Cem, an integral hardening admixture, for their 203-millimeter-thick
(eight-inch-thick), 1,858-square meter (20,000-square foot) unheated building slab. They chose this admixture because it provides abrasion resistance to the air-entrained concrete mix, which is something traditional broadcast hardeners are not suitable for. Of course, Hard-Cem is not just fully compatible with conventional admixtures and air-entrained concrete. It also doubles concrete wear life under harsh conditions. With these qualities, Hard-Cem provided a durable abrasion-resistant surface for St. Marys Cement’s concrete slab, ensuring that the concrete would last longer in its industrial environment.
Admixture for Abrasion and Erosion Resistance Unlike post-applied surface treatments that delaminate over time, or high-strength concrete that’s prone to curling and cracking, Hard-Cem integral admixture significantly reduces replacement and repair requirements and more than doubles the concrete’s wear life — lowering its embodied carbon footprint over its lifetime.
