Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1211841
Maturix Smart Concrete Sensors from Kryton International. Application of the Mapefloor I 302 SL system from Mapei Inc. F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0 | 9 Restoration products and services bring aging buildings back to life by ROBIN BRUNET To Preserve & Protect W ith restoration running the gamut from the mundane to the complex, it follows that an equally wide range of products and services are at hand to help rehabilitate buildings, their foundations, floors, roads, and other manmade infrastructure. The proliferation of solutions is particularly helpful for engineering firms such as RJC, which launched a restoration division back in 1983. "No question, the products we use today are vastly supe- rior to the technology of several decades ago, and they are vitally important given our aging infra- structure in this country and the extreme weather conditions they are subjected to," says Bryan Colvin, BSR managing principal at RJC's Calgary office. Because even the most resilient structures must be maintained, products and services are constantly evolving. That is evident at Kryton International Inc., whose suite of innovative Smart Concrete products include Krystol concrete waterproofing products, which are added to or placed on the con- crete to lower the permeability of the concrete itself, replacing the need for traditional waterproofing membranes. This revolutionary crystalline tech- nology reacts with water and unhydrated cement particles to form needle-shaped crystals that fill cap- illary pores and micro-cracks in the concrete to block pathways for water and waterborne contaminates. Kris Till, product manager at Kryton, notes that his company has "been actively working with con- tractors and ready-mix producers" on real-time monitoring of concrete temperature and strength development, which not only can save labour in retrieving temperature data, but can help users make better decisions on striping forms, tensioning, and loading concrete. This technology takes the form of Maturix Smart Concrete Sensors and addresses the problems asso- ciated with the lack of real-time insight in concrete strength and improves the time-consuming process around concreting, data collection, and lab specimens. With Maturix, a standard Type K thermocou- ple is embedded in the concrete to monitor concrete temperature. Data is transmitted to the cloud using a low power, long-range IoT network (Sigfox). In remote areas, if there is no coverage, a gateway is plugged into the Internet on the project. Data is automatically logged in the cloud and can be accessed from any online device. A calibrated matu- rity curve for the concrete mix being used can be entered to accurately predict strength development. Restoration Products & Services