Building Applications

Pumice stone qualities are suitable for:

Building applications

• Production of lightweight structural elements (pumice concrete blocks)
• Production of lightweight concrete
• Insulations and floor fillings

LAVA pumice stone is a natural, chemically inert building material that combines several intriguing features:

•  Low density (600-800kg/m3) when the sample is dry;
• Good compressive strength and satisfactory elasticity;
• Good thermal and noise insulating properties;
• A porous structure with low permeability;
• Non-combustibility
• Pozzolanic properties.  

LAVA pumice stone's extraordinary qualities have been utilised by numerous industries in the US, Europe, Middle East and Greece over several decades to produce high-quality building materials that comply with international regulations and meet contemporary building requirements.

Pumice stone building products have the following advantages:

• Excellent mechanical strength-to-weight ratio;
  Although approximately 30% lighter than traditional concrete, pumice stone features high strength values with significant benefits for the structure's cost-efficiency and behaviour (reduced dead loads and transportation cost).
   
• All types of lightweight concretes can be manufactured by altering the pumice stone's granularity and the concrete's composition: 
  • Structural: Compressive strength > 15 Mpa, Density  < 2000 Kg/m³
  • Structural and thermal-insulating: Compressive strength > 3.5 Mpa, Density < 1400 Kg/m³
  • Thermal-insulating: Compressive strength 0,5 Mpa, Density < 1000 Kg/m³
     
• Altering the composition of lightweight concrete, the element's geometry and pumice stone's granularity, we can produce building blocks for load-bearing or non-bearing masonry:
  • Compressive strength: 2,5-10 Mpa
  • Material density: 900-1400 Kg/m³
  • High thermal-insulating capacity
  • Thermal conductivity λ=0,22-0,33W/mK
  • Good sound dampening properties thanks to the pumice stone's porous texture that traps air, and high soundproofing-to-weight ratio
     
• Pumice stone products are non-combustible and thus enhance the structure's fire resistance
   
• Pumice stone products feature good seismic behaviour

Pumice stone lightweight concrete is ideal for:

• Filling interior floors and shaping final elevations and inclinations before laying marble, tiles or asphalt membrane.
• Insulations, as either the final layer to form inclinations or thermal insulation for roofs or thermal-sound insulation of interior flooring.
• Constructions and repairs, where reduced permanent loads and improved seismic behaviour are required.

More durable cities: A concrete that reduces energy bills for urban dwellers.
 

How great would it be to live or work in a building that saved you money? Well, you can in the French cities of Angers and Perpignan, thanks to our range of Thermedia® insulating concretes! The special feature of these materials is that they optimize the insulating abilities of external walls to reduce energy consumption.
Over three million households in France spend at least 10% of their income on energy bills. To reduce that level - especially in terms of space heating - there is only one solution: improving the thermal insulation of buildings.
 
As part of our contribution, Lafarge in France launched Thermedia® 0.6 concrete in 2009, in partnership with the construction company Bouygues. Its secret lies in its formulation, which improves the insulating properties of concrete by reducing thermal bridges in external walls. The result is a 35% reduction in energy loss through the façades.
 
This innovative concrete is already serving urban dwellers in France and has already demonstrated just how effective it can be! As part of an urban renewal project for a community on the outskirts of Angers, the developer and construction contractor specified Thermedia® 0.6 for a four-floor social housing block of 62 homes. Using this material also saved 200 man-hours of installation time.
 
In Perpignan, Thermedia® 0.6 has also been specified for the external walls of an office building used by occupational medical services. As the largest project so far to use Thermedia® in the south of France - and the first in a seismically active location - it also boasts another original feature: the aggregate used to produce the 530 cubic meters of Thermédia concrete was based on LAVA pumice stone.