As stated by Wise Campaign, British Science Week, run by the British Science Association is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths, featuring entertaining and engaging events and activities across the UK for people of all ages.
Across the UK however, British Science Week is predominantly celebrated by schools and those working within scientific fields, with many construction companies deciding not to get involved.
You may wonder where science comes into construction. Well, we feel that as a child, you often misconceive that the scientific formulas you learn in school aren’t useful unless you are going to be a scientist, but we disagree!
Here, we take a look at some of these scientific teachings and how they are applied within our industry to enable us to develop high quality, bespoke fibrous plasterwork.
Building Gypsum
We are taught a lot in school about the process of evaporation and often partake in fun scientific experiments in order to understand the process fully, and the properties of water. Well, what you might not know is that water is an important consideration when creating gypsum products.
In order to make building gypsum have a certain plasticity during manufacturing, water must account for 60%~80% of the semi-hydrate gypsum. It’s often thought that the number is as low as 18.6%, but an understanding of evaporation allows you to identify that excess water gradually evaporates in the hardening process, which leads to a large number of pores left in the hardened gypsum, with the porosity of 50%~60%. Because building gypsum needs to have low strength, small apparent density, low thermal conductivity and high sound absorption after hardening, it’s vital that this method is understood.
At Ryedale Interiors Ltd, we use a range of gypsum plasters in the manufacture of our GRG and fibrous plaster casts, and each product has a distinct set of properties that make it suitable for different situations. GRG casts are manufactured using a harder setting plaster so that they are stronger, thus meaning we can make larger casts for better site efficiency during installation. With Fibrous Plaster casts, typically ornate decorative cornices, these are generally cast with a slightly softer plaster which is reinforced with jute scrim instead of glass fibre matting.
Computer Aided Design
In science, we learn a lot about parameters, material properties, electronic circuits and how mechanical components fit together to make an end product both safe and operational.
When approached by Architects and other professionals, we’re often provided with detailed drawings which outline the specified design of the project in question. In order for us to correctly manufacture products in line with their requirements, we need to be able to use this data to develop CAD drawings.
During this process, we take the “design’ information from the architect’s CAD drawings and use this to produce our own ‘construction detail’ CAD drawings. Essentially, the architect indicates aesthetically what they want the finished product to look like, and our construction detail CAD drawings show exactly how this will be achieved for both the manufacture and the site installation of the works.
Ionic bonding
Different types of bonding give substances different properties – different melting and boiling points, different electrical conductivity, and different solubility in water, among much else. We learn a lot about this in science at school, and in our industry, it’s important to know whether glass reinforced gypsum is a suitable material to be used within the buildings of the projects we are approached about.
When specifying what products to use in the construction process, it is initially the responsibility of the designer to specify the product – but then it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to confirm that the product specified, is suitable to use in this location. As an example – GRG or Glass Reinforced Gypsum is a suitable material to be used to manufacture circular column casings INTERNALLY, but GRG is not to be used for column casings that are installed EXTERNALLY as they are subject to weathering. Alternative products that are weather resistant should be specified here.
These are just some of the behind the scenes scientific considerations involved in the production of our GRG and fibrous plasterwork products.
If you’re interested to find out more about the design, manufacturing and installation of our products, please email roger@ryedaleinteriors.co.uk.
