CHAPTER VIII

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METHODS AND COST OF FINISHING CONCRETE SURFACES.

Good design in concrete as well as in steel, masonry and wood, requires that the structure shall be good to look at. This means that the proportions must be good and that the surface finish must be pleasing. Good proportions are a matter of design but a pleasing surface finish is a matter of construction. Many, perhaps the majority of, concrete structures do not have a pleasing surface finish; the surface is irregular, uneven in texture, and stained or discolored or of lifeless hue. The reasons for these faults and the possible means of remedying them are matters that concern the construction engineer and the contractor.

Imperfections in the surface of concrete are due to one or more of the following causes: (1) Imperfectly made forms; (2) imperfectly mixed concrete; (3) carelessly placed concrete; (4) use of forms with dirt or cement adhering to the boards; (5) efflorescence and discoloration of the surface after the forms are removed.

~IMPERFECTLY MADE FORMS.~--In well mixed and placed concrete the film of cement paste which flushes to the surface will take the impress of every flaw in the surface of the forms. It will even show the grain marks in well dressed lumber. From this it will be seen how very difficult it is so to mold concrete that the surface will not bear evidence of the mold used. The task is impracticable of perfect accomplishment and the degree of perfection to which it can be carried depends upon the workmanship expended in form construction. Forms with a smooth and even surface are difficult and expensive to secure. It is impracticable in the first place to secure lagging boards dressed to exact thickness and in the second place it is impracticable to secure perfect carpenter work; joints cannot be got perfectly close and a nail omitted here or there leaves a board free to warp. From this point on the use of imperfectly sized lumber and careless carpentry can go to almost any degree of roughness in the form work. Only approximately smooth and unmarked concrete surfaces can be secured in plain wooden forms and this only with the very best kind of form construction. So much for the limitations of form work in the matter of securing surface finish. These limitations may be reduced in various ways. Joint marks may be eliminated wholly or partly by pointing the joints with clay or mortar or by pasting strips of paper or cloth over them, or the whole surface of the lagging can be papered; by the use of oiled paper there will be little trouble from the paper sticking. Grain marks and surface imperfections can be reduced by oiling the lumber so as to fill the pores or by first oiling and then filling the coat of oil with fine sand blown or cast against the boards.

The preceding remarks are of course based on the assumption that as nearly as possible a smooth and even surface finish is desired. If something less than this is sufficient, and in many cases it is, form produced surface defects become negligible in the proportion that they do not exceed the standards of roughness and irregularity considered permissible by the engineer and these standards are individual with the engineer; what one considers excessive roughness and irregularity another may consider as amply even and smooth. The point to be kept in mind is that beyond a certain state of evenness and regularity form produced surfaces are impracticable to obtain, because to construct forms of the necessary perfection to obtain them costs far more than it does to employ special supplementary finishing processes.

Surface blemishes due to dirt or cement adhering to the form boards have no excuse if the engineer or contractor cares to avoid them. It is a simple matter to keep the lagging clean and free from such accumulations.

~IMPERFECT MIXING AND PLACING.~--Imperfectly mixed and placed concrete gives irregularly colored, pitted and honeycombed surfaces with here a patch of smooth mortar and there a patch of exposed stone. Careful mixing and placing will avoid this defect, or all chance of it may be eliminated by using surface coatings of special mixtures. There is no great difficulty, however, in obtaining a reasonably homogeneous surface with concrete; the task merely requires that the mixing shall be reasonably uniform and homogeneous and that in placing this mixture the spading next to the lagging shall be done in such a way as to pull the coarse stones back and flush the mortar to the surface. Spading forks are excellent for this purpose. A better tool is a special spade made with a perforated blade; this special spade costs $3.

~EFFLORESCENCE.~--Efflorescence is the term applied to the whitish or yellowish accumulations which often appear on concrete surfaces. "Whitewash" is another name given to these blotches. Efflorescence is due to certain salts leaching out of the concrete and accumulating into thin layers where the water evaporates on the surface. These salts are most probably sulphates of calcium and magnesium, both of which are contained in many cements and both of which are slightly soluble in water. Efflorescence is very erratic in its appearance. Some concretes never exhibit it; in some it may not appear for several years, and in others it shows soon after construction and may appear in great quantities. The most effective way to prevent efflorescence would naturally be to use cements entirely free from sulphates, chlorides or whatever other soluble salts are the cause of the phenomenon, but the likelihood of engineers resorting to the trouble of such selection, except in rare instances, is not great, even if they knew what cements to select, so that other means must be sought. The most common place for efflorescence to appear in walls is at the horizontal junction of two days' work or where a coping is placed after the main body of the wall has been completed. The reason of this seems to be that the salt solutions seep down through the concrete until they strike the nearly impervious film of cement that forms on the top surface of the old concrete before the new is added, and then they follow along this impervious film to the face of the wall. The authors have suggested that this cause might be remedied by ending the day's work by a layer whose top has a slight slope down toward the rear of the wall or perhaps by placing all the concrete in similarly sloping layers. Mr. C. H. Cartlidge is authority for the statement that this leaching at joints can be largely done away with by the simple process of washing the top surface of concrete which has been allowed to set over night by scrubbing it with wire brushes in conjunction with thorough flushing with a hose. But efflorescence frequently appears on the faces of walls built without construction joints and in which a wet concrete is puddled in and not tamped in layers, and here other means are obviously essential. Waterproofing the surface of the wall should be effective so long as the waterproofing lasts; indeed one of the claims made for some of these waterproofing compounds is that efflorescence is prevented. The various waterproofing mixtures capable of such use will be found described in