How To Find The Best Commercial Concrete Contractors Near Me?

What Is Commercial Concrete Construction?

Some people may be confused and not informed on what commercial concrete construction is. This commercial concrete is generally considered as the concrete used to build or enhance business facilities. These business facilities may include industrial buildings, warehouses, retail stores, and even restaurants. 

Using commercial concrete for construction doesn’t simply end with walls or floors but the entire building including exterior walkways, pavements, and even including architectural details.

What Is The Difference Between Commercial And Residential Construction?

It may be easy to confuse the necessity of choosing the correct concrete for the job, but, it is undeniable that there are clear differences for using different types of concrete. For instance, commercial construction is a building that is fit for commercial purposes. The given examples of these commercial constructions are stores, offices, and schools.

Meanwhile, residential construction, as the name suggests, focuses on buildings in which people will be living. Different examples and forms of these residential constructions are Homes, apartments, and housing complexes. These are all the very core differences of the two, residential and commercial construction, although there’s more to it, each type of construction has very different methods and specialties.

Although there is a lot of crossover between the skills, a specialist with each type of concrete cannot simply do what they have never done before. For example, a residential specialist cannot just work with commercial concrete they haven’t done before, vice versa. 

What Are The 5 Types Of Construction?

When people see a building, they never usually think much of it, although some may think about the type of material used, people never usually never think about the types of building construction. This mindset and perspective change for contractors. When one becomes more aware, they realize that building elements like the structure, walls, floors, and roof are all telling of a building’s class.

If the commercial concrete companies already have a keen eye and great intuition for those details, the next step would be to know the five types of building construction. Buildings can generally be categorized into five different types of construction, these types are fire-resistive, non-combustible, ordinary, heavy timber, and wood-framed.

With the first type, fire-resistive type of construction, the walls, partitions, columns, floors, and even the roofs are considered some of the most non-combustible when it comes to fire-resistant ratings. These buildings can usually be spotted due to their height, as the fire-resistive buildings are usually more than 75-feet tall. 

The fire-resistive types, true to their name, are designed to withstand the effects of fire for a long period of time to prevent a fire from spreading. Since the roof must also be composed of noncombustible materials for the effects to work properly, ventilation in these types of buildings is not an option.

The next is the non-combustible type, which works similarly to the fire-resistive type in which walls, partitions, columns, floors, and roofs are noncombustible. Even with all the similarities, they are still two different types and therefore, have a difference in performance. The non-combustible type provides less fire resistance, it also does not withstand the effects or spreading of fire as well as the fire-resistive type. 

Although the name “non-combustible” may suggest that it is resistant to fire, that is not the case, it is actually because of the fuel the building contributes. A fine, common example of buildings that uses this type of construction are newer school buildings, which usually use a metal floor and metal roof with masonry or tilt-slab walls.

Then, there are also the ordinary type buildings, which can also be called brick-and-joist structures. These ordinary type constructions have a brick or block walls, along with a wooden roof or floor assembly which is not protected against fire. 

The heavy timber type buildings have noncombustible exterior walls and interior elements. These buildings are made out of solid or laminated wood. All wooden members must meet dimensional requirements.

Lastly, wood-framed buildings are the most combustible out of all the types. They are the only construction type that allows combustible exterior walls. If there are any requests and questions, do not hesitate to give us a call.