All you need to know about the Decking Slab

ALL ABOUT THE DECKING SLAB

In home building construction, people get confused with different technical terminologies being used by industry professionals to describe different types of the work. Since its not everyone that underwent training in construction engineering, a need therefore arises to explain some of the technical terms we might meet in home construction. This is why we are going to look at the term “decking”.
A decking, which could be described by insiders in the building industry as the suspended slab, is a platform built to hang on top of a building ground floor unit, and therefore forms the floor for the upper unit of a building. There are many materials that could be used to create a decking platform. Engineers have used metal sheets, aluminum, hard wood, concrete, synthetic fibres and thick plywood boards to create different shapes and sizes of decking for use in different types of buildings.
For the sake of this write up, we are going to be focusing our attention on the concrete decking slab. The concrete decking slab is made when the objective of the deck is durability and safety. Among other types of decking materials, the concrete is among the most reliable, it could last for very long, even up to hundreds of years. In buildings where fire could be a risk, the concrete deck could be relied upon as compared to wood or plywood. The concrete deck also fits well on buildings especially those started with concrete columns and beams.
The concrete beam is always reinforced with good quality metal bars (iron rods). The specifications of the rods that should work in any decking slab should be detailed by a qualified building professional, specified in the building plans and approved by the state or local authorities to ensure compliance to existing building codes. There are so many types of iron bars for different decking slabs, there is the 25mm, 20mm, 16mm, 12mm, 10mm, 8mm etc. These iron rods are used in the combination suited for the project, as stated in the building plans.
There are also specifications on the thickness of the slab, the mixing ratio for sand and aggregates like granite, gravel and for cement. Care should be taken to ensure a superb mix for the decking slab concrete, a good concrete mixer is advised where it is available. A concrete poking Romance-Machine is also a very useful tool to ensure the efficiency of the decking process.
The following pictures are for the decking we have completed in the past, we have started and completed more than 60 different decking slabs in different locations, for more questions and inquiry, call Kenn on 08033350750.