In numerous forums devoted to repair and construction, new branches arise with surprising constancy, in which the question of how much concrete cube weighs is considered. Although often instead of a practical answer, a person interested in this is gently ridiculed or translated as a joke.
Indeed, building concrete is not the material that is measured in kilograms. As a rule, in this case, the unit of measurement is a measure of volume - a cubic meter.
In which case arises it is necessary to determine how much the cube of concrete weighs? First of all, this question interests someone who has to carry out a certain amount of work with this material manually - knead in a trough or carry a solution in buckets, since it is impossible to use a concrete mixer. For example, if you need to fill in some form, and there is no place to place equipment at the place of work (the basement of the house with a hatch opening to the room). In this case, the question of how much the cube of concrete weighs is far from idle.
Material differences
Unfortunately, it is not possible to accurately answer a simple question and give a number, since concrete can be different. It varies in classes, taking into account a number of factors - composition, strength, mobility (fluidity), etc.
Concrete is a building material obtained by mixing in a certain proportion of crushed stone (crushed rocks), cement, water and sand. Other components, such as plasticizers, are also sometimes added to the mixture. To answer how much a cube of concrete weighs, you need to know the ratio of all components.
Depending on this indicator, five grades of the mixture are distinguished (sometimes three):
- classic or heavy concrete. Crushed stone prevails in them, and the cement-sand aggregate serves only for the initial bunch of stone grains among themselves. The standard composition of such a mixture includes 250 kg of cement grade 400; 0.7 tons of washed sand; about 160 liters of water and 1.2 tons of crushed stone. It is allowed to change the proportions, which allows to obtain more plastic (but less durable) or even more dense concrete.
In general, the weight of the cube of such a mixture is a little over two tons;
- an extra-heavy mark is obtained by adding additional inclusions - barite, metal inclusions, etc. It is more difficult to work with such mixtures, therefore their main application is military facilities and nuclear power plants. The weight of the cube is from 2.5 tons;
- lightweight. From heavy differs slightly. Obtained by reducing the number of heavy fractions. Weight ranges from 1.8 to 2.2 tons;
- light. One of the most popular now. So, foam concrete is one of the varieties. Weight reduction (1.8 tons - the limit) is due to the fact that porous components or foaming agents are added to the mixture;
- ultralight. The mass of such a mixture rarely exceeds 500 kg. Such a significant reduction was obtained due to the large number of air bubbles contained in the mass of material. It has high thermal insulation properties.
However, the sale of ready-mixed concrete most often involves the classic composition of the mixture. So, if you order cars, rather than interfering with the components yourself, the mass of the mixture will be from 2.2 to 2.5 tons per cubic meter.