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Temperature and Humidity for Dry Mix Mortars

I was at the inaugural conference for Dry Mix Mortars on Tuesday 11th September. In the room were many of Australia’s cement technologists talking about cement renders, cement adhesives, building boards, brick and brick mortars.

One common theme in many of the lectures was the need to keep cement and cement products dry before they are used on site. One lecture was giving statics that one particular cement loses 50% of it reactivity very quickly after being exposed humidity.

There are some cements that Australia cannot produce and so they must be imported, which creates 2 issues. One is that the containers take time to come to Australia, normally 6 weeks, so that aging is an issue with cement. Unlike wine cement does not get better with age. The other issue was that there were many times that the cement has become lumpy during transit. This is through contact with dampness, compression of the bags, or a combination of both. As many of the cements come from Europe, then the containers must sail through the tropics.

What surprised me was not one of the technologists present knew that battery operated data loggers existed that could measure and record both Temperature and Humidity.

I explained to them, over a cup of coffee that all they needed to do was to send several Thermocron HC to their supplier and have them place them into the container with their cement. Once the container is unpacked, then the data can be downloaded and the information about the temperature and humidity linked with both time and date can be seen. This information would then be used to assess the cement and determine its reactivity.
The Thermocron HC is about the size of a $1 coin and weighs 35g. It can be placed anywhere inside the container or inside a pallet.

Knowing the environments that the cement has been subjected means that alterations can occur pre-production, rather than holding up production while lengthy quality control tests are performed. With this knowledge, it would mean that a greater number of batches can be produced each day.

Visit our website to order your logger, or ring 0296146417 if you want to discuss your requirements with one of our support team.

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Unfortunately we have had a couple of large orders not make it and then the customer refused to pay. A friend suggested that the easy way to avoid the dispute is to insure any shipments where we have a significant risk.

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