Concrete

Concrete is an age old material which has been known to form naturally in certain conditions but it has been in use for millennia. The Egyptians used an early form of concrete when building the pyramids but the Romans were experts in its use and they developed the use of admixtures. They also used a form of light weight concrete when forming the dome of the Pantheon, still there today.

Concrete is a mixture of three basic components, water, aggregate in the form of rock and sand and cement and the form of cement almost universally used today is called Portland Cement which was invented by the Englishman Joseph Aspdin in 1824. We used a lot of concrete at Tipperlinn..

Following on from the site excavations and the removal of excess debris concrete was next to be introduced in the building process. The concrete came in the form of strip foundations below the new walls and as concrete slabs below the new floor areas. Trickiest of all were the concrete retaining walls where site excavations had taken us below the adjacent ground levels with the neighbours on the east side of the site and at the junction of Stable Lane and Tipperlinn Road where we were below the road surface.

In total we used about 55 cubic metres of concrete or about 130 tonnes. Thankfully most of it was delivered via a mobile concrete mixer but about 15 tonnes of it was mixed by hand on site.