How concrete has changed over the years

Concrete is a man-made material combining cement with aggregate and water to produce a material that looks like stone. Evidence of a concrete like material was used by Egyptians about 3000 BC. They used gypsum mortars and mortars of lime as well as mud mixed with straw to bind bricks when building the pyramids.

More evidence can be found that Romans used an ancient form of concrete about 2000 years ago to build the Coliseum and the Pantheon in Rome. Everyone knows that all roads lead to Rome, but less people know that 5300 miles of those roads were in fact built from concrete.

From 300 B.C. to 476 A.D., the Romans used Pozzolana cement from Pozzuoli, Italy, to build the Appian Way, as well as the Roman baths and the Pont du Gard aqueduct in southern France. The mix consisted of small gravel and coarse sand mixed with hot lime and water plus horsehair to reduce shrinkage.

Ancient Chinese used cementitious materials to hold bamboo together in boats and in the Great Wall of China. History also suggests that Assyrians and Babylonians used clay as a bonding material.

In 1756, John Smeaton, a British engineer, made the first modern day concrete (Hydrolic cement) by adding pebbles as a coarse aggregate and mixing powdered brick into the cement. In 1793 He built the Eddystone lighthouse in Cornwall, England with the use of his inventive Hydrolic cement.

In 1824 an English inventor, Joseph Aspdin, invented Portland Cement. He made concrete by burning grounded chalk and finely crushed clay in a lime kiln until the carbon dioxide evaporated, producing a strong cement. Portland cement has remained the dominant cement used in concrete production today.

After thousands of years of producing such historical structures, frequent rain causes devastation to such momentous triumphs in technology. However concrete repair is now available for buildings that are slightly damaged and otherwise crumbled after years of rainfall.

With today’s economic issues, we simply do not want to have to tear down a building just to re-build structures due to weather conditions, as this is far too expensive, so instead we send in the experts and let them work their magic.

Click here for a video of those experts, on the projects they have repaired and some techniques that are able to use.