Heidelberger Beton GmbH supplies air-entrained concrete for Wuppertal parking deck

The parking deck of a group of companies in Wuppertal needed renovating. Due to the cramped spatial conditions and in order to provide a certain number of unrestricted parking spaces during the construction work, the construction project had to be planned meticulously.

“That's why we divided the project into two construction phases from the start. We will have renewed the upper parking deck by the end of 2021, and then the lower part at the beginning of 2022," explains Sven Bakschas, Managing Director of the construction company, Svebak GmbH. “In addition to solid planning, we therefore also wanted a building material that is easy to process and that saves us the time-consuming air-entrainment test on the construction site. The air-entrained concrete Aircrete can do this. So the choice was easy for us,” reports Bakschas.

Aircrete, the special air-entrained concrete (LP concrete) from Heidelberger Beton GmbH, has been chosen for its consistency. Even with a surface treatment, the pores are not destroyed. A shortcoming of conventional types of concrete, on the other hand, is that their air pores – after the treatment of the surface, the so-called wing smoothing and / or discs – are destroyed in the area near the surface. The result: large-scale concrete spalling from exposure to frost and de-icing agent.

“We are not aware of any such damage at Aircrete. We know that from other construction projects in Dortmund, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Ulm. The latter was more than ten years ago and the parking decks are still completely in tact,” reports Bakschas. “The material therefore stands for stability and durability. How long a structure ultimately lasts depends of course on the movement on the decks and also on the amount of de-icing salt applied, i.e. on the overall stress”, says Bakschas.

But in his opinion the added value is undisputed. On the one hand, the added value in use for the customer, and on the other hand, the added value when it comes to handling. “We know that the LP content can fluctuate with conventional LP concrete types, especially if the material has to be pumped over long distances,” explains Peter Lubas, West Sales Manager at Heidelberger Beton GmbH, North-West region. And longer pumping distances always have to be taken into account in tight building conditions. In Wuppertal, too, the concrete for the upper deck was initially pumped 28 metres up and distributed over a large area within a 40 to 50 m radius. It is good when you can rely on the quality of the building material.

For even better planning of the concreting, Svebak GmbH used the new ‘OnSite’ app from Heidelberger Beton GmbH for this construction site. The app gave those responsible on the construction site the arrival times of the truck mixers in real time and they had all orders at a glance. The free app is already available in the north-east, north-west, south-west, Kurpfalz-Karlsruhe regions and from April also in Munich.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/europe-cis/24022021/heidelberger-beton-gmbh-supplies-air-entrained-concrete-for-wuppertal-parking-deck/