Concrete curing room 1

[soilcon]

thread592-194430'

I'm working in a design and construction of a curing room. My question is, the possibly materials are going to be CMU and reinforced concrete floor, columns and roof, do the surfaces of the room have to have any special paint or is better let it unpaint (plastered). My concern is with the corrosion of the rebars.

Thanks

 

[Ron]

Unless you have an inordinately large curing room planned, you won't need columns. Most are constructed of concrete masonry and painted on the inside with a block filler then epoxy.

The roof can be either concrete or it can be marine plywood. I've done both. They both work fine.

I have found that a rectangular room is more efficient for storage than a square room. Make it big enough that you can also put a couple of small tanks in the room so that you can submerge and condition certain types of samples (cubes, small cylinders for grout, etc.).

It is most important that your temperature control and humidity control be carefully done.

 

[soilcon]

The room is going to be about 50'x 25'x 8'.
The climate in the area where the room is going to be located is very hot, I was thinking in use 6" thick CMU, Do you think that this wall thickness will be enough or I need to use more thickness to mantain the temperature more easily inside the room.

Thanks

 

[Ron]

CMU's are usually 8 inches, though you can get 6". Thicker ones will help maintain a more stable temperature.

It sounds like your problem won't be heating, but cooling. Make sure your AC unit is outside the room and does not dehumidify in any way.

That's a huge curing room. How many specimens do you test per day?

 

[soilcon]

This room is for a dam project, the general contractor just ask me to quote for the room, in fact I do not know how many specimens/test per day, but he mention about that he need storage capacity for 3,000 specimens.

I got a little experience with controlled temparature curing but not at this big scale, most with curing tanks.

 

[Ron]

You might want to consider pre-fabricated curing rooms. You might need several, but would probably be less expensive and could be sold at the end of the project.

 

[soilcon]

The average temperature outside the room will be around the 95 farenheit degree. I need to mantain the relative humidity over 95% and temperature from 70 to 76 farenheit degree. I will install attached to the roof, the piping to provide the room with fog like nozzles. I'm considering provide the piping with chill water. Is this better than air condition the room or should I install both, an air conditioner and provided chilled water.
Any other idea of how to mantain the relative humidity-temperature parameters?
Thanks

 

[Ron]

With 95F outside temperature, you'll probably need both AC and chill water.

In the moisture rooms I've designed and built, the temperatures were similar. I used both.