Building with Concrete

Mastour ReadyMix is one of the largest concrete manufacturing companies located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with ready mix concrete and cement plants in Jedda saudi Arabia, Khamis Mushayt Saudi Arabia, Abha Saudi Arabia, Dammam Saudi Arabia,

Concrete is one of the most durable building materials. It provides superior fire resistance, compared with wooden construction and can gain strength over time. Structures made of concrete can have a long service life. Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world with annual consumption estimated at between 21 and 31 billion tones.
Concrete is used more than any other man-made material in the world. As of 2006, about 7.5 billion cubic meters of concrete are made each year—more than one cubic meter for every person on Earth.
Energy efficiency
Energy requirements for transportation of concrete are low because it is produced locally from local resources, typically manufactured within 100 kilometers of the job site. Similarly, relatively little energy is used in producing and combining the raw materials (although large amounts of CO2 are produced by the chemical reactions in cement manufacture). The overall embodied energy of concrete is therefore lower than for most structural materials other than wood.
Once in place, concrete offers significant energy efficiency over the lifetime of a building. Concrete walls leak air far less than those made of wood-frames. Air leakage accounts for a large percentage of energy loss from a home.
Pervious concrete
Pervious concrete is a mix of specially graded coarse aggregate, cement, water and little-to-no fine aggregates. This concrete is also known as “no-fines” or porous concrete. Mixing the ingredients in a carefully controlled process creates a paste that coats and bonds the aggregate particles. The hardened concrete contains interconnected air voids totaling approximately 15 to 25 percent. Water runs through the voids in the pavement to the soil underneath. Air entrainment admixtures are often used in freeze-thaw climates to minimize the possibility of frost damage.
Fire safety
Concrete buildings are more resistant to fire than those constructed using wood or steel frames, since concrete does not burn. Concrete reduces the risk of structural collapse and is an effective fire shield, providing safe means of escape for occupants and protection for fire fighters.
Options for non-combustible construction include floors, ceilings and roofs made of cast-in-place and hollow-core precast concrete. For walls, concrete masonry technology and Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs) are additional options. ICFs are hollow blocks or panels made of fire-proof insulating foam that are stacked to form the shape of the walls of a building and then filled with reinforced concrete to create the structure.
Concrete also provides the best resistance of any building material to high winds, hurricanes, tornadoes due to its lateral stiffness that results in minimal horizontal movement.
Earthquake safety
As discussed above, concrete is very strong in compression, but weak in tension. Larger earthquakes can generate very large shear loads on structures. These shear loads subject the structure to both tension and compression loads. Concrete structures without reinforcing, like other unreinforced masonry structures, can fail during severe earthquake shaking. Unreinforced masonry structures constitute one of the largest earthquake risks globally. These risks can be reduced through seismic retrofitting of at-risk buildings.