CAA Autumn NEWS 2006
October 20, 2006

MEMBER UPDATE
Neil Dowie has taken over as Council chairman from James McDonald who has completed a successful two year term in office. Chris Fletcher will be the new vice chairman. David Jones will be the new council representative for Fosroc.

CAA member Degussa construction chemicals is now BASF construction chemicals following the takeover by BASF earlier this year.

BRITISH STANDARDS ACTIVITY
BS 8443; Specification for establishing the suitability of Special Purpose concrete Admixtures has been published. Further details on using this standard can be found on Admixture Information Sheet AIS 2 available for download on the publications page.

Roy Jones has been seeking CAA TC views on a number of points in the revision of BS 8500.

John Dransfield has been active on B 517/SC1/WG 30 where the UK response to work on producing European standard test methods for SCC for:

* - slump flow including T500 value
* - V-funnel test
* - L-box test
* - sieve-segregation test
* - J-ring test

are being discussed. Most of the standards will be similar to that proposed in the European Guidelines and specification for SCC (document available from publications page). One difficult issue is the spacing of bars in the J-ring. It seems that a closer spacing than that for the L-box will be needed.

EUROPEAN STANDARDS ACTIVITY
EN 934 parts 2 and 6 amendments, Passed their final vote and were published, in early 2006. The changes in part 2 will reduce the frequency of FPC testing.

EN 480 parts 4, 5, 6, 11, 12 amendments. Passed their final vote and after editorial changes, were published in early 2006.

EN 480 parts 1, 2, 10 amendments. Passed enquiry but have not yet been published due to problems over some editorial comments. 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, has passed formal vote but is not yet published.

EN 934 part 1. A new standard covering common requirements for admixtures. The draft agreed by SC3 has passed enquiry in summer 2006. Comments will be considered by SC 3 before submitting the document to a formal vote.

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 2007 before the standard is published.

EN 934-4, European standard for Grout admixtures. This standard will need amendment following the positive vote for significant changes to EN 445 and EN 447 on grouts for pre-stressing tendons. An EFCA proposal will go to the autumn meeting of TC 104/SC3

TC 104, three of the four standards were approved at the Formal Vote stage and are now being prepared for publication:

* - EN 14889-1: Steel fibres
* - EN 14889-2: Polymer fibres
* - EN 14845-2: Effect of fibres on the strength of concrete

EN 14845-1: Reference concretes failed to achieve sufficient approval. A modified version taking account of the criticisms is under preparation to re-submit for approval by the UAP procedure.


CONCRETE SOCIETY
CAA has produce two new current practice sheets on admixtures for ‘Concrete’ magazine. The first appeared in the September issue. The CAA drafts of the two sheets are available for download as AIS 12 and 13 from the publications page of this web site.


EFCA
Les Hodgkinson will continue to represent CAA at EFCA TC meetings until the end of the year when he fully retires. Colin Hurley of Sika will now represent CAA at EFCA ETG meetings.

EFCA recently joined the new European Construction Chemicals Federation EFCC and will be the official admixture TC for that organisation, continuing to represent the industry at European level.


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 AND THE ENVIRONMENT
There are 9 admixture environmental sheets available for download from the publications page of the website including 6 EPD’s covering all the main admixtures.

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

Archive News