BUILDING WITH CONCRETE

insightit
8 Jun 2018

Gunlake are one of Sydney’s leading concrete suppliers! We deliver concrete across the Greater Sydney region. After an unprecedented year of fires, floods and harsh winds, a bright light has been shed on the benefits of building with concrete.

From its affordability to its light-weight substance, there are many advantages of choosing wood as a construction material. However, despite how easy timber, lumber, and plywood can be to work with, it’s important to keep in mind the multiple drawbacks that can arise with these options.

Let’s start with wood’s inherent fragility. This material is less stable in high wind conditions, such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Furthermore, lumber is prone to moisture and termite intrusion. Yet, one of the most obvious drawbacks of building with wood is its flammability. For instance, wood trusses can start reducing in thickness by 25 percent after just 15 minutes of catching on fire.

Fortunately, there’s another building material that excels in durability: concrete. Although this material is nothing new, thanks to its bountiful number of benefits, there’s no denying it’s making quite the comeback.

Not only is concrete hardwearing and long-lasting, it’s aesthetically pleasing, too. More so, concrete buildings evoke a strong sense of security with a low-maintenance finish, appropriate for both interiors and exteriors.

With a single material, many things can be accomplished: energy efficiency, strength, durability, resilience, and safety.

What’s more? Concrete building naturally become more energy efficient, too. The thermal mass that concrete walls and floors provide to a building are able to absorb heat during the day and release it at night. This passive transfer smooths out heat transmission through the walls and limits the need for mechanical systems.

Although the initial cost of concrete is typically higher than building with variations of wood, the life cycle costs are lower. Because of it’s chemical nature, concrete gets stronger over time. Therefore, buildings stand for centuries with little maintenance required.

As more homeowners are experiencing the catastrophic effects of natural disasters, the value of using stronger and more resilient building techniques is evident. Building a house with concrete not only provides a safe haven from fires, floods and harsh winds, it’s also a testament that the structure is intended to stand for generations to come.

Gunlake are Sydney’s quarry and concrete experts. We’ve been suppling Sydney with the highest quality quarry aggregate products for decades. Some of our most popular quarry aggregate products include manufactured sand, concrete aggregate, drain aggregate, and road base rock.We’ve also been supplying concrete to Sydney builders for decades. Our concrete is tailored to suit each job! We’ve got concrete plants in Silverwater, Glendenning, and Smeaton Grange. This allows us to deliver concrete to almost all of Sydney! Some of our main concrete products include standard concrete, coloured concrete, architectural concrete, pool spary mix concrete, kerb mix concrete, block fill concrete and piling concrete. As one of Sydney’s leading concrete suppliers, you can trust us to deliver your concrete on time!

If you have any questions feel free to contact Gunlake for more information.