NEWSWORTHY
RAUBEX COMPLETES QUALITY RDP MULTI-STOREYS
Raubex Building has notched up another successful RDP housing project in Gauteng, completing 480 units at Riverside View south of Diepsloot in the Fourways area. The company’ s work on the R75 million Riverside View RDP Multi Storey project – developed by Valumax – began in June 2016 and ran through to October 2017. The client’ s requirement was for 15 four-storey buildings to be constructed at Riverside View, with 32 units per building. These were the first four-storey buildings erected for RDP housing in Johannesburg, making it a flagship initiative for future multistorey RDP units that are planned. Quality control was an important aspect of this project, with quality and finishes being inspected regularly by engineers, the NHBRC, the City of Johannesburg, building inspectors and Valumax’ s own quality control team. Each Riverside View unit consists of two bedrooms and an open plan kitchen, with a living room and one bathroom. The walls were skimmed and painted inside and a bath, toilet and basin installed. Raubex Building’ s completion of the 480 units is helping to put a serious dent in the housing backlog in the Johannesburg area, and the company is looking to complete over 400 more units there early in 2018 – with hopefully many more to come. Valumax’ s‘ mega-project’ at Riverside View will see a total of over 9,600 residential units in that development, a real contribution to meeting the country’ s evergrowing housing needs. www. raubex. com
AFRISAM COLLABORATES WITH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Through its technical services arm – the Centre for Product Excellence – construction materials leader AfriSam has been showing what is possible when business collaborates with bright young minds at universities.
Partnering with the University of Johannesburg( UJ) in recent years, AfriSam has made its specialists and its laboratory facilities available to UJ for its students – both for practical learning as well as to conduct research.
Earlier this year, that partnership led to two research papers being presented at the International Conference on Advances in Sustainable Construction Materials & Civil Engineering Systems, held at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Research for the papers was carried out at the Centre of Product Excellence by UJ Civil Engineering Science student Broadley Miller, and written up by Miller in conjunction with the department’ s technical lecturer Johannes Bester and senior lecturer Deon Kruger.
The one paper – on the use of a concrete additive to eliminate returned concrete waste volumes – was particularly well received by the conference delegates, according to Bester, who presented on behalf of the authors. The research investigates the effects of a recently developed twocomponent powdered product in separating returned fresh ready-mix concrete into fine and coarse aggregates. The product is made from polymers and inorganic compounds, and is mechanically mixed into returned concrete to achieve this result.
“ This allows for the reuse of the returned concrete as aggregates in the manufacturing of new concrete,” says Bester.“ The returned concrete waste can therefore be eliminated, thus reducing virgin aggregate usage, as well as reducing the environmental impact of returned concrete.”
In their second paper, the authors explored the use of recycled aggregates as a replacement for virgin materials in the manufacture of concrete. They found that fine recycled aggregates have a much greater negative impact than the use of coarse recycled aggregates.
Above: Johannes Bester is the Technical Lecturer at the UJ Civil
Engineering Science faculty
“ The presoaking procedure used was problematic when used with fine aggregates and caused a large amount of excess water to be added to the concrete mix as a result,” says Bester.“ This study highlights the importance of planning the demolition process of a structure to ensure that the best possible quality of recycled concrete aggregate can be extracted.
10 News Watch