LIGHTWEIGHT, INSULATING FLOORS AND ROOFS A REALITY WITH CEMTEQ
CemteQ is committed to developing, manufacturing and distributing value-adding, sustainable cementitious products, systems and solutions that are lightweight and offer significant thermal insulation, fire-resistance and acoustic advantages over conventional building materials.
Sister company, Sun Silicates, produces high-quality exfoliated perlite which is used by CemteQ as an aggregate replacement in composite cementitious formulations to produce unique and bespoke lightweight, insulating solutions for the building industry.
Perlite has been widely used in cementitious blends for lightweight, insulating floors since the 1940s in the northern hemisphere. It is a naturally occurring, amorphous volcanic glass formed by the rapid cooling and solidification of volcanic lava which traps crystalline water into its mass.
The highest quality raw perlite is imported and is heat processed using state-of-the-art technology. When suddenly heated to above 870°C, the siliceous perlite particles expand to between four and twenty times their original volume as the combined water in the raw rock vaporizes and creates countless tiny bubbles in the glassy material. This results in a snow-white material with excellent thermal insulation properties, exceptional lightweight and fireproof characteristics and a very low carbon footprint.
When it comes to insulating lightweight flooring, CemteQ offers a number of solutions. CemteQ’s ScreedLiteis perlite-based composite screed that is commonly used in under-tile heating applications to prevent downward heat loss, thereby saving significantly on energy costs. It offers approximately seven times the insulation properties with 25% of the weight of conventional screed materials. It comprises a special blend of high-quality cement and perlite aggregate. It is also used extensively for levelling suspended slabs due to its significant weight saving as well as on roof decks to provide a slope to fall. Standing water on a roof deck is destructive to roofing membranes and often results in leaks. Once placed, ScreedLite can be screeded to the required thickness and sloped towards drainage points or the roof edge.
Together with cement and designer admixtures, CemteQ also uses recycled polystyrene for its significant lightweight, acoustic and thermal properties. In this way, the company is able to incorporate a waste material, that would otherwise end up in landfills, into the building process.
CemteQ has recently introduced a new preblended and bagged lightweight concrete blend which comprises the highest grade recycled polystyrene aggregate blended with the correct ratio of cement and admixtures. Branded EnviroteQ, the composite product is specially formulated to be mixed with water and pumped on site with no yield loss for lightweight screeds and concrete. Used in a wide range of applications, EnviroteQ is a cost-effective solution for floors and roof slabs thicker than 50mm. The product is supplied in 100 litre bags with 10 bags yielding 1 m3 of concrete with a cured density of 600 kg.
According to Managing Director, Victor Bouguenon, “This new development complements our existing range. Our perlite-cement composites are relatively fragile and therefore not suited to vigorous mixing and pumping and are ideally suited to screed thicknesses up to 50 mm. EnviroteQ does not lose yield in the mixing and pumping process and is ideally suited to thicknesses from 50 mm upwards.
Using a combination of a thick lightweight EnviroteQ polystyrene-based screed combined with a thinner perlite-based ScreedLite screed, high thermal resistance values can be economically and relatively simply achieved. For reroofing and reflooring applications, this combination provides permanent, cost-effective, slope-to-drain designs with high R-values over flat and often irregular substrates.
More information from CemteQ Building Solutions, Tel: +27(0)11 824 4600 / email: info@cemteq.com / www.cemteq.com
