American Concrete Institute

Shotcrete Rising
In the final installment of their series on the history and development of the shotcrete method of concrete application, William Drakeley and Lily Samuels examine the industry's current state of the art -- then cast an optimistic eye toward the approach's future.
The Elevated Game
In the world of concrete science and application, innumerable variables have an influence on whether a concrete installation is successful or not.  These include but are not limited to the skill of the applicator, the suitability of the mix design, the temperature at the time of application, the equipment used, the water-to-cement ratio and the size of the aggregate. For all the seeming complexity, however, the nature of the material itself invests the process with a few immovable facts.  One of these directly undermines the swimming pool industry’s “standard” that calls for a compression strength of 2,500 pounds per square inch for pneumatically placed concrete (that is, gunite or shotcrete).  It’s not because the standard is inadequate per se; rather, it’s because
Concrete Discussions
Concrete is so essential to the work of watershapers and so pervasive in all forms of construction that it's a bit too easy to take it for granted.  Using myself as an example, I'll confess to having fairly thin knowledge of the material, its history and the myriad uses to which it is put to use - until, that is, I looked through Concrete: A Pictorial Celebration (published by the American Concrete Institute in 2004). This wonderful, 260-page book offers a (mostly) visual tour of the fantastic and utterly essential applications of concrete that have indelibly marked the advance of modern society, worldwide.  It's organized into several sections, each one chock full great photos accompanied by informative, albeit brief, textual passages.   It's not a technical discussion by any means; instead, it's an almost dizzying tour of the