Many beginners owning their own householdat the cottage or in the countryside the question of what to build the buildings is interesting. After all, in the modern market of building materials there is a wide assortment of wall blocks, wood materials, technologies of frame construction. What material should I choose as the basis for building the foundation and walls of a house, cottage, garage or shed? In this article, we will consider the properties of such a material as a sand-cement block, its characteristics and applications.
As the main components of the wallSand-cement blocks contain benign Portland cement, coarse-grained sand and stone crumbs. Rare producers include plasticizers and other additives in their composition.
In accordance with GOST 6133-99, such blocks are made with dimensions 390 * 190 * 190 and 400 * 200 * 200 mm. Other characteristics include:
• weight - 14-18 kg;
• thermal conductivity - 0,4-0,55 W (m * С);
• strength - M-35;
• frost resistance - F-25;
• density of blocks - 940-1100 kg / m3.
The sand-cement block is formed fromsand-concrete mix by means of vibration shaking, which causes its high compressive strength and long service life. This technology provides almost ideal geometric parameters of blocks and the correspondence of practical data to the declared characteristics.
Block sand cement is integral or hollow.The cavities are two, four, seven or eight inside. The void blocks have slightly less strength, but they are more heat-resistant and soundproof, and also have less weight and price.
Sand-cement blocks 20x20x40 cm, as a rule,are used in the construction of load-bearing structures, supporting columns, foundations, walls of socle floors. The walls can be half a block thick, single-row, one-and-a-half or double the thickness. Due to high strength characteristics and satisfactory thermal insulation properties of hollow blocks in the central strip of Russia, one-row thickness is sufficient for laying external walls. Block sand cement is resistant to aggressive environmental influences and is used, including in industrial construction. The consumer qualities of the blocks include:
• ease of masonry;
• Simplicity of plastering and painting blocks;
• An acceptable cost;
• strength and durability of buildings from blocks;
• ecological compatibility;
• Good sound insulation and thermal insulation of walls.
Sand-cement blocks allow you to createUnique bearing structures of houses, buildings with their further insulation. They are recommended for use in the construction of foundations, socles and outer walls of industrial buildings, low-rise buildings and multi-storey buildings (of which the walls are filled during monolithic construction). The laying of sand-cement blocks is easy compared to the laying of single bricks. After all, the volume of one sand-cement block is equivalent to the volume of 7 bricks.
Particular benefit in comparison with the flood methodhas erection of sand foundations and basement floors of buildings. This allows you to exclude the process of preparing the formwork and immediately after the foundation installation proceed to the laying of the walls, without waiting for the concrete to grind, which gives a significant, at least a month, acceleration of construction work.
When erecting foundations and basement floorsbuildings it is advisable to use solid blocks, and when laying walls - hollow, which reduces the cost of construction, improves the heat and sound insulation of walls and reduces the requirements for the strength of the foundation. For the construction of partition walls, special septal wall cement-concrete blocks can be used that are reduced in thickness by half. They are also made whole or hollow.
An even greater gain in the cost of construction works allows us to achieve the use of sand-cement blocks for the masonry walls with the addition of porous materials - expanded clay, slag of fine fractions, sawdust.
Use of sand-cement blocks atconstruction of low-rise buildings can significantly speed up the execution of works while meeting the requirements for heat and sound insulation, strength and durability of buildings. It is these distinctive features that make them widely used in modern construction.
