CONCRETEThe Oldest New Material
A building material made from a mixture of broken stone or gravel, sand, cement and water, which can be spread or poured into moulds and forms a stone-like mass on hardening.
Concrete may be one of the defining materials of modern architecture, but it has been in continuous use for around 8,500 years, first by the Nabataea Bedouins, then by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans and, a little later, by the modernist architects of Milton Keynes, city blocks and many a contemporary housing estate.
Concrete is essentially a mixture of two ingredients: Cement (Portland or other) and an aggregate such as crushed stone, gravel, sand, slag or even recycled concrete. The Romans also added horse hair (to reduce cracking while it hardened) and blood (to improve frost resistance) to their opus caementicium.
In 1853 François Coignet, a French industrialist, embedded iron bars in the unset mix and gave us reinforced concrete – a major advance that, as we’ll see, has its own problems…
But while concrete’s basic formulation may be simple, the variety and proportions of its mix are complex. To clean or repair any material, you first need to know exactly what that material is. And concrete is no different…
Given concrete’s ancient legacy, it should be no surprise that its care and cleaning has evolved down the centuries, right up to the present day and the introduction of advanced cleaning methods. But we are also expert in longer standing, and equally effective, techniques.
Either way, we can address discolouration, efflorescence, acid staining, etc. We have a detailed understanding of the full range of cleaning techniques (from chemical to light abrasion) and of when and how each should be applied.
Cleaning & Repair
Our work often incorporates more invasive treatments including flexible joint sealing and crack injection to address flaking, spalling and sealing issues.
Concrete ’Cancer’ & Regent Street Disease
Please Note: Both these conditions require highly individual treatments and techniques that have been developed in isolation. Consequently, we always advise Clients to employ dedicated specialists when their presence is discovered. We can advise on finding the right Company and manage the work if required.