Making Better Concrete

[Nick Grant]

Making Better Concrete
Guidelines to Using Fly Ash for Higher Quality, Eco-Friendly Structures

by Bruce King, PE

You don't have to care about “green” building — this is for people who
want to design, build, and have better concrete.

$20 retail
now available through the following link from Builders Booksource in
Berkeley:
http://www.buildersbooksource.com/cgi-bin/booksite/21165.html

Tom Woolley just sent the announcement round and it might be useful for anyone looking at reducing the impact of concrete hence I posted in mtls section.

Anyone got any useful experience of PFA?

[David Olivier]

Actually there may be a problem with PFA. Some PFA – not all I hasten to add – is too radioactive to be used safely in building materials. I first read this surprising advice in a Polish paper (they mine a lot of coal in Poland) presented to a BRE conference in the 1990s.

I then asked for further info. from the NRPB but they either didn't know or didn't want to release data for individual sources of PFA – it depends entirely on the chemical composition of whichever coal was burned in the power station concerned. I'm afraid I never got a straight answer from the NRPB except.

As far as I can see we won't have PFA when we stop burning coal (this century). So it's a temporary measure at best and unless we have data on the activity of the PFA used perhaps PFA should be confined to concrete which is intended to be used outdoors, or in footings.

Better perhaps to continue the research the late Chris Mattingly did with me (but he was the expert, being a structural engineer) on adding small amounts of rock flour to concrete to replace part of the cement content.

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