DECORATIVE AND COLOR CONCRETE
Ready mix concrete has much more to offer than just your common gray. Interior floors, exterior flatwork, and building design elements can all be enhanced with color and texture to add visual value to any project. At AVR, Inc. & Affiliates we can produce and deliver concrete in hundreds of differing colors.
For more detailed information on Decorative Concrete and Available Colors please see our DECORATIVE CONCRETE PAGE.
When you order ready mix, you want the highest quality product delivered on time and you don't want to be told that your job's too small, or your site too remote. Our motto at AVR is Promises Made, Promises Delivered.
From traditional ready mix concrete to specialized mixes, AVR, Inc. can produce a variety of concretes to meet strength, speed, aesthetic, and structural requirements. Our service area extends throughout the greater Minneapolis and Saint Paul metro area to ensure that we can provide consistent product and service to all our customers.
We have our own full time, quality control department that tests our products continuously. Our ACI certified technicians ensure that only the highest quality ready mix reaches your site. To learn more about our quality control and engineering capabilities, visit the Engineering Section of our site.
Please continue to read below or click on one of the many links located throughout this site to find out more information on our traditional concrete capabilities as well as many of our specialized and high performance concrete mixes.
Lightweight Concrete refers to concrete with a dry density of 90-115 lb/ft3 compared to normal weight concrete of 140 - 150 lb/ft3. The concrete is made with lightweight coarse aggregate and is air-entrained. The mixes can be designed to achieve strengths similar to normal-weight concrete.
Usually the slightly higher costs of lightweight concrete are offset by the size reduction of structural elements, the need for less steel reinforcement and a lower volume of concrete, which lowers overall costs.
AVR, Inc. & Affiliates is known as a leader in lightweight concrete and lightweight concrete pumping. AVR, Inc. supplied the lightweight concrete to M.A. Mortenson on the Norwest Center project in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
This project signifies the first time a ready mix supplier has taken complete responsibility for the pumping and supply of lightweight concrete. AVR, Inc. pumped lightweight concrete to the 57th floor, a vertical height of 780 feet with a total line layout of 1280 feet. Not one yard of lightweight was rejected or lost due to mix specifications or the inability to pump.
Also, placed to a height of 47 stories by pump on this project was 10,000 psi at 28 days high strength concrete.
HIGH PERFORMANCE CONCRETE
High-strength concrete is defined by the American Concrete Institute (ACI) as concrete with a specified compressive strength of 6,000 psi or greater. Although concretes with compressive strengths greater than 6,000 psi can be produced using only cement as the binding material, most of AVR's high performance mixes will also contain a mineral admixture such as fly ash, silica fume, or ground granulated blast furnace slag.
We have extensive experience in producing high-performance concrete strengths in excess of 15,000 psi. AVR was the supplier on the first silica fume project in the Minneapolis metro area. We supplied PCL Construction on the Spruce Tree Parking Ramp at Snelling and University Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1989.
Flowable fill was initially developed over 20 years ago as a solution to problems originating from poorly compacted soil or granular fill. Flowable fill is a high slump, low strength concrete used primarily to replace compacted granular material underneath a concrete slab.
The main benefit of flowable fill is that it is self-leveling, and needs little or no spreading or compacting. After it has been placed, flowable fill can be excavated and we can produce flowable fills with compressive strength of less than 150 psi to over 2,000 psi.
Flowable fill can save you time and money because it self-compacts and doesn't require extensive field testing. Lastly, flowable fill makes use of Fly Ash. Fly ash is a waste by-product from power plants that burn coal.
SELF CONSOLIDATING CONCRETE
Self Consolidating Concrete is a highly workable concrete mixture that can be placed in heavily reinforced structural elements without vibration. Self Consolidating Concrete uses super-plasticizer and viscosity modifying admixtures. These admixtures keep the mix very fluid during the pouring process.
Self Consolidating Concrete requires no vibration and can be used for difficult and constrained pours involving unusually dense reinforcing steel or narrow channels through which the concrete must flow. It can also be poured into intricate molds to produce finished concrete with unusually fine surface texture.
Post-tensioning combines the high compressive characteristics of concrete with the tensile strength of steel to increase overall strength and durability of the structure.
In a post-tension concrete system, high-strength steel tendons, along with reinforcing steel bars, are embedded and anchored in the concrete. After the concrete has reached adequate strength (typically 3,000-4,000 psi), the tendons are tensioned imposing a compression force on the concrete. The tensioned tendons help to counterbalance the tension loads imposed on the structure.
The rate of construction can be increased with post-tensioned concrete buildings due to the quick strengthening properties of the material. Form work in successive floors can typically be built within a week of concrete placement.