CAA Winter NEWS
January 3, 2006

MEMBER UPDATE
Chris Fletcher will be the new Council member for Degussa
Abu Saleh replaces David Whitfield for Fosroc.
Damien Baxendale replaces Nick Jowett for Christeyns

BRITISH STANDARDS ACTIVITY . Roy Jones has taken over as representative on B517/1 for concrete. Les Hodgkinson remains the representative on B517/3 for admixtures, John Dransfield is chairman. John Dransfield also represents CAA on B/577 the mirror group for dangerous regulated substances and on B517/1/WG30 on concrete test methods.

BS 8443; SPECIAL PURPOSE CONCRETE ADMIXTURES has passed BSI final vote with only few editorial comments. The document should become a formal British standard by February 2006.

EUROPEAN STANDARDS ACTIVITY . John Dransfield represents the UK at CEN TC104/SC3 admixtures meetings. He is also the chairman to SC3/WG3 on corrosion effects and represents TC104/SC3 at TC104/WG 14 on ER3 health safety and the environment and SG02/WG3 the group of Notified Bodies controlling surveillance for CE marking.

EN 934 PARTS 2 AND 6 AMENDMENTS. Passed their final vote and after editorial changes, will be published, probably in early 2006. The changes in part 2 will reduce the frequency of FPC testing. These two parts were put forward as draft ISO standards but the ISO committee decided not to proceed with this work.

EN 480 PARTS 4, 5, 6, 11, 12 AMENDMENTS . Passed their final vote and after editorial changes, will be published in early 2006.

EN 480 PARTS 1, 2, 10 AMENDMENTS. Passed enquiry and after editorial changes, will be published, for formal vote in early 2006. The changes in part 1 improve the mix design and allow the use of both CEM l 52.5 and 42.5 cement.

EN 480 PART 14, CORROSION TEST METHOD. Passed enquiry but with a lot of comments. A sub committee of CEN TC104/SC3 has meet to consider these and is producing a redrafted document. This will be considered by all SC3 members before it goes out for formal vote, probably in mid 2006.

EN 934 PART 1. A new standard covering common requirements for admixtures. The draft has been agreed by SC3 and will go for enquiry in 2006. It includes requirements relating to enhanced corrosion testing with an approved and a declared list of admixture constituents. Constituents not on the list will have to be tested to EN 480-14. This part will eventually include requirements related to Drinking Water and Dangerous Substances.

EN 14754-,1CURING COMPOUNDS. The text of prEN 14754-1 has been edited and will be submitted for publication as a Technical Specification (TS). This means that the UK does not have to withdraw BS 5328 but is asked to try the two methods in parallel and submit comments.
CEN TC 104/SC2 has been asked to start drafting a clause in the EN execution standard ENV 13670 to cover curing, including the use of curing compounds.

EN 934-3, EUROPEAN STANDARD FOR MORTAR ADMIXTURES has now been notified in the official journal of the EU and CE marking can start from late 2005.

EN 934-5, EUROPEAN STANDARD FOR SPRAYED CONCRETE ADMIXTURES. The amendments with the missing test methods to this standard have still not appeared from CEN. This means that it will be well into 2006 before the standard is published.

TC 104 MEETING IN LARNAKA
A large number of standards were approved for enquiry or formal vote including:
EN 13670 Execution of concrete structures (E)
EN 445. 446, 447 Grouting of prestressing tendons (Revision)
EN 934-1 Admixtures Common Requirements (E)
EN 450-1, 450-2 fly ash, (amendments)
EN 15167-1, 15167-2 GGBS (FV)
EN 14889 -1, 14889-2, Steel and Polymer fibres (FV)
EN 14845-1, 14845-2, Fibre test methods (FV)
TC 104 N 0717 Leaching test method TR (E)

TC104/SC1 has been asked to initiate work on standards for Self-compacting concrete. Work will start on test methods. A new Task Group 16 has been formed to review the recommendation for the specification and use of SCC given in the European project group Guidelines and then to provide clauses on SCC for the 2010 revision of EN 206-1.It was agreed to standardize the following test methods for SCC:

slump flow including T500 value;

V-funnel test;

L-box test;

sieve-segregation test;

J-ring test.



CEN members were free to standardise other tests at national level if they so wished.

CONCRETE SOCIETY. CAA activity remains focused through the Materials group. Mike Grantham has taken over as chairman from Bill Price. John Dransfield normally represents the CAA at meetings.

CAA has been asked to produce new current practice sheets for Concrete magazine. The secretary has produced a first draft covering current practice but an additional sheet covering admixture practice back to basics has also been suggested and is being drafted.

The Technical report on external paving is running late because of problems over the design information. The admixture section will be largely the same as in TR34 but may need some additional information on air entrainment. A first draft is now expected in early 2006.

The Technical report on macro-synthetic fibres is also progressing and it is hoped that most of the contents will be in place by the end of this year. The report should be published in March / April 2006.

The Environmental committee continues to hold additional meetings and is publishing regular documents related to this topic. Recent publications include Recycled aggregates in concrete, Thermal Mass and Towards zero waste in ready-mixed concrete. A new document on Interpreting environmental data is under preparation.

A new TC to update TR 31 on Permeability is being formed and there is also a proposal for a new committee on Penetrating surface treatments.

EFCA. Les Hodgkinson will continue to represent CAA at EFCA TC meetings for a further year. Mark Baxter is no longer with a CAA member company, It ia hoped that Colin Hurley of Sika will represent CAA at EFCA ETG meetings.

Although EFCA voted for co-operation rather than membership of the new European Construction Chemicals Federation EFCC, they have been put under very heavy pressure to join and at the Board meeting on 6 December this was agreed. It is not yet clear if this will produce a conflict of interests and adversely affect EFCA work with the European Concrete Platform, CEPMC and other European organisations.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION. John Dransfield represents the admixture industry on the EC expert sub committee for cementitous products in contact with drinking water. It is now clear that the EAS legislation will require all concrete constituents, including admixtures, to be assessed for suitability for this application. This is likely to be on the basis of proxy samples where a test sample is compared with a reference mix. The water regulators still need to agree the requirements for each constituent and this may prove difficult, especially in the case of admixtures. The CAA members have provided a large amount of evidence that will hopefully lead to most admixtures being approved without the need for testing.

The work on Dangerous regulated substances is at a relatively early stage. CAA is working with the concrete industry at UK and at European level to try and ensure that Concrete and its constituents are regarded as AWT (approved without testing).

Admixtures will be classified under REACH as a 'preparation but many of the substances used to make admixtures will have to be registered. Polymers are exempt, at least for the moment provided they do not have a significant level of free monomer. The amount of information appearing on MSDS will probably increase. Concrete may become a preparation but is more likely to be an article but how much information it will be required to give on substances it contains remains unclear.

SUSTAINABILITY. Through EFCA, the CAA has 6 Environmental Product declarations available that can be downloaded from this web site. CAA is also involved with the Concrete Centre, Concrete Society and European Concrete Platform in working to demonstrate the sustainability advantages of using concrete.

For further information on any of these areas of activity, please contact the Secretary on phone/fax 01564 776362.

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