American Architects --- Do You Say that Concrete Has...
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... 'gone off' when it sets?
That's the standard term in British English [always sounded a bit odd to me...].
TIA,
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We say concrete has cured. Or, more colloquially, set up. Some people say dried, except that most of the water is bound up in the chemical process of curing, and anything left over never should have been there to begin with.
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Excellent, thanks mitcorb.
Sorry about all these weird questions lately, because I'm having to translate a book on sketch up from French into American English!!!
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Mitcorb's got it but mostly, we use "set".
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You'll hear "gone off" on the jobsite a lot, referring to the point at which the concrete cannot be manipulated any more, so you will be changing from floats to steel trowels for the final polish.
So more of a colloquial use than architectural, but anybody in the trade will know what you mean here in Canada. -
In England we too say concrete has 'cured' - the phrase 'gone off' is used more for 'mortar' cementing bricks together. We also say concrete has 'set' when it's hard but it takes 28 days to 'cure' fully.
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@dale said:
You'll hear "gone off" on the jobsite a lot, referring to the point at which the concrete cannot be manipulated any more, so you will be changing from floats to steel trowels for the final polish.
So more of a colloquial use than architectural, but anybody in the trade will know what you mean here in Canada.i've worked with cement here in canada all my life and have never heard "gone off" even once, if i heard that i'd hand the guy a tissue
. i think "set" is the most common term when cement becomes unworkable, "curing" actually takes 28 days so it would not be the proper term until much later in the process. 
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From my experiance as a husband of a building contractor (my wife even handles power tools...sexy!) I cannot recall ever hearing "gone off" here in Texas, I have heard "good to go" normally by the framer as he is normally itching to get going, but "set" is the term our foundation guy uses all the time.
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Interesting, must be more Regional than I thought.
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Here in the South, "gone off" means that you went walkabout for a piece, have severely hurt someone, or used unholy language to disparage someone.
These activities may anger Basil Marceaux...
[flash=480,385:2n5xlmd6]http://www.youtube.com/v/aOlM1pPMNBc&hl=en_US&fs=1[/flash:2n5xlmd6]
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In England... 'gone off' refers to 'hardened cement' BUT also more commonly to...
a piece of very stale cheese or a maggoty beef-steak or some very old eggs... which might all be described as 'gone off'...
PS: Also you can say that a person has 'gone off' - when you mean that they have left you, and that they are now somewhere else that you are probably unsure off. Of course this assumes they are not dead - in that case they could well have 'gone off' in the sense of stale food... and be smelling unpleasantly
OR they have 'gone off' to do something - e.g. 'He's gone off fishing' ['He's gone fishing' reports a simple 'fact', but adding the 'off' implies a certain criticism - i.e. he's doing it but he should be doing something else...].
Also when a person has 'gone off on one' - it is common slang for having lost their temper... [which probably involved ranting and raving a lot!]
Then when a person has 'gone off' another person [or something] they no longer like them [or it] - e.g. 'I have gone off my wife after she shouted at me' OR 'I have gone off skiing since I broke my leg'.
Or when a 'device' has 'gone off' it has activated - e.g. 'The bomb has gone off' OR less violently 'My alarm clock gone'... Which is probably nearest to the 'activation' of the cement...
So many meanings so little time........... -
- 1 for "set" as translation for "gone off"
I will add that the period between "Set" and "Cured" is often referred to as "Green"
Best,
Charlie - 1 for "set" as translation for "gone off"
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@unknownuser said:
- 1 for "set" as translation for "gone off"
I will add that the period between "Set" and "Cured" is often referred to as "Green"
Best,
Charliegood point.
- 1 for "set" as translation for "gone off"
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Curing to me, is an interactive process, which requires that you maintain the desired conditions (particularly in the early stages) so that the concrete can hydrate slowly and reach the intended compressive strength.
I emailed a buddy that I have place a lot of concrete with, and asked him about concrete "going off".
His reply was:
"Jesus Dale. it sounds like you've gone a bit off! It's when we better have done our job #"ing right, or we will be jack hammering the sonofa#" out of there"
Thought I'd share that, makes me kind of miss the jobsite. -
Take care to use the word "concrete" when you mean concrete, and "cement" when you mean cement.
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Cement as in mortar?
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Cement is a dry ingredient of concrete or mortar, concrete is the whole mixture.
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"Cement" is an ingredient of concrete, mortar, wall-rendering, tile-adhesives and several other things - it is the 'cement' that 'glues' the other ingredients together - these are typically sand, aggregate, lime, plasticizers. air-entraining-agents etc... plus plain old water...
Cement goes hard after it is mixed with water and a chemical reaction then happens - it is an old form of readily available and cheap 'glue'. Cement gets hot when it's setting - you can get burnt by fresh concrete!
When the cement is hardened it is said to be 'set' [or in some dialects 'gone off'] - when it is used in greater thicknesses than thin-coatings or bed-joints - like with 'in situ concrete' - it can take some days for the chemical reaction to be finished. Typically after a day or so the concrete is 'set' and hard enough to walk on... BUT it hasn't yet got all of its strength - after 7 days it's pretty strong and after 28 days it's 'cured', i.e. it has reached most of its final strength - so then the props and shuttering can be removed from structural beams or floors etc... i.e. after a design period when it has reached its 'design strength'. For structural concrete sample cubes are taken as the concrete is poured and later these are tested at given time spans to check they have reached their expected 'design strength' at that time - typically specified as something like 'Concrete cube-strength to be 50kN/m2 at 28 days'.For simplicity let's just say the the concrete has 'set' when it's hard and it's 'cured' when it's reached its strength
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I am a contractor and I have heard the term "gone off" before or in the more active and immediate sense "it's going off". I would say it is not even that uncommon. When it is used I would say it is taken to mean the concrete has achieved its initial set where the surface can still be worked to achieve a more polished finish but its liquid characteristics are gone. More often than not it is said with a bit of panic because there is more work to be done.
I have lived in New England and the Southwest if that helps. I wouldn't think the term was out of place if I read it in the above context.
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