Repair of girders in six steps

The girders are an important part of the structure of a building. For those who are not very knowledgeable in construction, they are the part of the structure that goes between pillar and pillar at the top, on which the beams rest, thus forming the floor slab.

The concrete girders are made up of reinforcement of iron rod, aggregates and cement. As we have already mentioned on other occasions, when concrete receives the moisture it undergoes "carbonation" of the armour, that is, the iron rusts little by little, and when it rusts it increases in size, causing damage to the girder that must be repaired. Immediately.

STEP 1
We must not forget that we are talking about structural problems, so, first of all, we will have to prop up the work area in the correct way. A girder in poor condition loses the ability to support the weight for which it was designed, and therefore the upper floor may collapse.

STEP 2
Once the slab has been propped up correctly, we will have to tap all the concrete that is in poor condition. Generally, it is not necessary to make much effort to make it fall. Once we find healthy concrete, it is not necessary to continue chipping.

STEP 3
After chipping the concrete in poor condition, the iron rods will be visible. In this step, it will be necessary for a technician to assess whether the rods are in good condition or if on the contrary, they have lost a lot of section, which will require adding a structural reinforcement. We will talk about what kind of reinforcement it can be in step 6.

STEP 4
In this step, what we want to achieve is that the oxide that has weakened the structure does not continue to advance. For this, we will clean the rods as best as possible. The usual thing is to do it with a wire brush, removing all the impurities that the rust has produced. Then we will apply an oxide passivator on the entire rod.

STEP 5
Time to coat the rods again with concrete. To join an old concrete with a new one, we can apply a connecting bridge, which is nothing more than a kind of glue that will allow the perfect union between two concretes that have not cured at the same time. Instead of using concrete, it is common to use repair mortars, prepared specifically for this function.

STEP 6
Once we have reached this step, depending on the evaluation of the rods that we have done in step 3, we will either finish the job or have to reinforce the structure, for which we can choose different methods, for example placing an iron profile for under the jácena