How to Check Cement Quality at Construction Site

Cement is one of the main ingredients in construction which should be good enough and here are some steps to check the quality.
Cement is one of the main products of masonry construction where the quality and quantity both are very important, as the construction of a building is dependent on these two things and if the one of them gets wrong the construction will become a big failure. A good construction manager is responsible to bring the right products on time and to check out if the quality and quantity, but sometime after checking the materials it can be damaged. Especially Cement is a product that comes in packaging so it becomes an important task for a civil engineer to check the quality on site. The checking is necessary at the time of preliminary inspection but it is not possible to check all the engineering qualities of cement on site, still there are some field tests that can give a minimum idea of quality of cement.
On the site the engineers can do some field tests to check the quality and the process is described here through nine steps:

• Date of packing: with time, every kind of cement los its strength so it is very important to check the manufacturing date of the cement before buying it. Naturally the cement must be used before 90 days from the date of manufacturing.
• Rubbing test: take a pinch of cement between the fingers and rub it well, it must be smooth while rubbing if it is not then it means corruption with sand.
• Float test: if a small amount of cement is thrown in a bucket of water, the particles should float for some time before sinks or sitting.
• Temperature test: temperature test is one of the easiest tests to check the quality of the cement; if we put hand in a bag of cement the good cement will give a cool feeling in case it feels warm then it is for hydration reaction.
• Strength test: every block of cement 25mm*25mm and 200mm long is made and absorbed for long 7 days in water; then it is placed on supports 1500mm far and loaded with a weight of about 34kg. So the blocks made of good cement will never show any signs of failure, besides that, the briquettes of a lean mortar are made of size about 75mm*25mm*12mm dipped in water for 3 days after drying. The good quality cement briquettes will not break easily.
• Lump test: the cements should not have any hard lumps which are made by absorbed moisture from the atmosphere.
• Color test: the general color of cement is grey with a light greenish shade.
• Smell test: the bad quality of cement will give an earthy smell in making paste.
• Shape test: cement paste is capable to set under water also so make a paste to check the setting.

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