Shower curb is a type of concrete curb, but it’s constructed in different location and situation. Shower curb is using the similar materials with normal concrete curb which is concrete or cement mortar, but it’s different in term of the purposes of building shower curb. Usually concrete curb is built in the roadside, yard, and etc, while shower curb is built into the rest room.

The purpose of building shower curb in the rest room or wash room is to prevent the water flow out to the external floor. It’s act as a shower drain as well, it directs the water to the drain instead of flowing out to the external floor. In this situation, it’s meaning that the shower curb will be contacted with the water, shower curb is built by concrete too, which means in order to prevent the water contacts the concrete shower curb and affect the durability of shower curb, shower curb needed to be protected by some kind of water proofing system.

How To Build Shower Curb

There are several ways and methods to build shower curb, one of the way is using plaster board. The plaster board acts as a wall to prevent the water soaks into the shower curb. It’s kinda simple to build the shower curb with the method of using plaster board. Procedures as below :

1) Assuming that the concrete curb has been done.

2) You have to install the plaster board that has been bought from the supplier.

3) Jointing the plaster board with screws that can be joining with the shower curb.

4) Cutting the extra portion of the plaster board.

5) For the curving shower curb, the plaster board need to be cut in 45 degree that can be joining with the following shower curb.

6) After shower curb has been cut, join them in a suitable length.

7) After the shape has been set, install the plastic board on the shower curb.

8 ) After placing them nicely, secure the plastic board outside the wall of the shower curb by using the galvanized roofing nails.

9) Shower curb with plastic board has done!

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There are couples of design of concrete drain in construction, such as berm drain, toe drain, embankment shoulder drain, cascaded drain and etc. All of them are made from concrete, the mixture of the concrete is depending on what drain to be constructed. Concrete drain can be constructed by hand, without any machine, concrete can be mixed by hand as well if the quantity used is less. Sometimes concrete drain can be spoiled or failure, concrete drain such as cascaded drain is connecting with the concrete curb, if the concrete curb doesn’t function well to control velocity of the water flow, the high speed of water flow might destroy the concrete cascaded drain, so rectification work for concrete drain has to be carried on.

How To Rectify Eroded Concrete Drain

1) The eroded concrete drain shall be excavated and form benching with a case backhoe.

2) Suitable earth shall be filled in layer and compact with a plate compactor.

How To Build Concrete Drain

1) After completion of reinstatement of the eroded concrete drain to the profile, excavation of the concrete cascading drain shall be carry out by case backhoe.

2) The bottom trench earth shall be levelled and trimmed manually by general workers for laying for 50mm thick lean concrete.

3) After the lean concrete had set, erection of formwork shall be carried out.

4) BRC reinforcement of the correct dimensions shall be installed.

5) Grade 20 concrete shall be laid and compact with poker vibrator up the drain bottom slab.

6) After the base concrete had set, concrete drain side wall reinforcement and formwork shall be installed.

7) Grade 20 concrete shall be delivered, laid and compact to specification.

8 ) Prior to all concreting works, formwork and reinforcement shall be inspected by the Engineer or his representative to ensure that the formwork and reinforcement are properly aligned and secured in place.

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In construction project, almost all the civil and structure (C&S) project have bridge construction. C&S project consists of road works, drainage works, pavement works, bridge works and etc. In bridge construction, it requires specialist of bridge contractors to take over the bridge works because it’s a very technical works because it’s a large structure and must not has any error or mistakes occurred.

The bridge design must be prepared by expert engineer and assisted by consultant. The bridge design must be able to carry all the work load or vehicle load, or else it might be collapsed. There was many cases of concrete bride collapsed due to design fault or usage of unknown materials, which is not only happened in my country but many other countries.

Concrete bridge can be constructed by using prestressed concrete, either pre-tension method or post-tension method. Pre-tension method means the tendon has been stressed and plug in into the concrete bridge before doing concreting. Post-tension method means the tendon is stressed by the machine after it has been concreting in the concrete bridge. Prestressed concrete are very famous and mostly been used in bridge construction, the purpose of using prestressed concrete is to increase the strength of the tendon or reinforcement bar, so that it can carry and support the load on the concrete bridge.

How To Build A Bridge?

I’ll be roughly explaining on how to build a bridge. There will be 5 simple sketches about how to build a bridge. I get the sketches from my current tender in Bahrain. So, this will be the procedure of constructing a concrete bridge in Bahrain. The procedures are almost the same with my country, I think it’s the standard method and procedure of constructing concrete bridge for all the countries.

1) The bored piles for the abutments are installed. The bored piles are drilled into the soil, bored piles are used because of the status of the soil is not stable, so bored piles are used to strengthening the soil. It’s one type of ground treatment.

2) The abutments and wingwalls are constructed.

3) Bearings installed. Bearings are used to reduce the vibration when vehicle drive through the concrete bridge so that the concrete will not crack.

4) Submerged drainage pipes are installed as a drainage system to allow the rain water flows. After that, the channel below the bridge is filled with sand.

5) Superstructure is cast and prestressed sand removed. The superstructure also known as concrete beam. There is a few types of concrete beam like : U-Beam, T-Beam, cast-in-situ beam and also precast beam.

After that, all the necessary works like deck slab, pavement works, road works, parapet, railing and drainage works will be constructed. All the materials must be tested before it’s used to construct the concrete bridge so that the bridge contractor can construct a perfect and high quality concrete bridge. Cost saving is very important in construction but safety is the most important in construction as well.

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In construction area, many contractors do not want to follow what the client’s need or client’s instruction. Contractors do their own way without follow the design because of saving cost, this is the most serious problem that occurred in construction line. In my case, I faced a lot of similar problems in my project which the drainage contractor doesn’t follow the design and causes the drainage systems in trouble.

What Is Drainage Systems?

Drainage system is very important for a building, industrial area, housing area, and etc. Drainage is used to guide the rain water to flow into the right place. It’s used to avoid flood happening in that area. Most probably drainage is constructed with concrete, but there is also some drainage systems that installed with pipe or we called it piping system as well.

In construction, there is a drainage called Cascaded Drain. Cascaded drain is constructed on the slope, it’s constructed like a staircase and it’s constructed in steps. It’s very commonly used in my country, it’s very useful to be constructed on the slope to avoid slope failure due to overflow of rain water.

I’ll be explaining what is concrete cascaded drain and how is it going to be look like if it’s under designed, which is happened in my project site.

Before we can construct the concrete cascaded drain on the slope, we have to do excavation work so that we can install the formwork system to pouring the concrete.

The photo above shows a workman is installing the formwork system and concrete is going to be poured after the formwork system work is done.

This is what a concrete cascaded drain supposed to be constructed and the drainage system is working well. The steps are in 90 degrees and the speed of water flow can be slowed down when the water rain comes from top to bottom.

In the above statement, that’s a proper way and proper drainage system which is constructed on my other project site. I’m going to show you a failure drainage systems that has been occurred in my current project site. The failure drainage systems is due to the cascaded drain is under designed, the drainage contractor didn’t follow the design and even my instructions. It’s lucky that I’m still able to order the drainage contractor to repair the failure drainage system.

This is the concrete cascaded drain which is under designed. As you see on the photo and compare it with the photos above, there is no 90 degrees steps like the staircase. Other than this, the height of the sides for the drainage system is not enough and it’s not following the design. With that said, when the high volume of water rain and high speed of water flow, the drainage systems doesn’t perform well to slow down the speed of flow. In this case, when the high speed of water flow, the water overflow onto the side of the cascaded drain and we called it stone pitching.

This is the incident after a few days of high speed water flowing. The stone pitching on the side of cascaded drain fall down. The drainage system is totally fail because of the design error. In this case, we have a few months period, it’s like a warranty from contractor and we called it as “Defect Liability Period“, which mean that the drainage contractor have to ensure that the drainage system is working perfectly within that period.

So, I ordered the drainage contractor to repair the failure cascaded drain. Although it’s still not looking nice but as long as it can support the slope and has the ability to slow down the water rain flow. The drainage contractor doesn’t follow my design and repair in his own way.

After repairing of the failure cascaded drain, it looks fishy but it can still performs well. That’s the under designed drainage system, it may waste a lot of time and cost to repair it.

I ordered the drainage contractor to repair the stone pitching and rise up the level to avoid overflowing of high speed water rain flow. Other than this, I ordered him to construct a 150mm height of brickwall at the bottom of guardrail to protect the stone pitching and avoid the overflowing as well.

It’s not a standard design for a concrete cascaded drainage systems. Although it works well but everything goes wrong, we will be facing problem if the government doesn’t accept the design and we have to waste time and cost to re-construct the drainage system again. In construction line, many smaller contractors are trying to save their cost and trying to construct the works in simple ways and using cheap material.

As what I discussed with MAHAGURU58 in “Precast Concrete Road Curb” article, so called ‘con’tractors are throwing their reputation, they save cost and make a good profit but they lose their reputation. Reputation in construction line is much more important than money, you lose your reputation and you’re not able to get any jobs from client in public or private project.

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What is Concrete Road Curb

Concrete road curb is the road edging where a flat pavement or path meets an unflat street or walkway, the level of both roads is different and the water will flow to the lower level portion.

It’s one type of concrete curb called combined curb and gutters. It’s commonly used to overcome the flooding problems.

Normally road curb is made from concrete, stones, alphalt and etc, but concrete and alphalt are commonly used for road curb in construction industries. Wherever you go on the road, you can see the concrete road curb besides the walkway.

Photos Of Concrete Curb At Site

Below is some photos that I took while I went to site. This is a very simple concrete curb.

- Straight Concrete Road Curb -

- Curved Combined Concrete Road Curb And Gutter -
[It's same with straight concrete road curb but it's just constructed follow the road line]

- Direction Of Flow And Concrete Slab Cover -
[There will be a small hole that allows the water flows in into the drainage]

- Drainage System -
[The water will flows into the drainage system]

Function Of Concrete Road Curb

There is a few of function and usage for the concrete curb at the roadside. There will be a few purposes of installing concrete curb :

i) Avoid Flood
It’s works as a gutter that allows the water flow in by lower road level and flow into the drainage.

ii) Safety To Driver And Motorcyclist
If there is no concrete curb there, driver might drives onto the walkway and people on the walkway might get hurt. Other than this, if there is no concrete curb as a drainage system, there must be flood when raining, the water might stopped at the roadside without flow into the drainage in proper way. It’s very slip, when motocyle or car pass by, the tires can be slip and cause them to lose visibility and ability to brake and stop down, it may causes an accident.

Type Of Concrete Road Curb

i) Basic Curb

That’s very easy to construct basic concrete curb because you don’t have to joint it with gutter, it’s a straight concrete curb. But it’s rarely used it can’t helps to overcome the flood problems, it’s only used in minimal location.

ii) Combined Curb and Gutter

This type of concrete curb is a combination of curb and gutter, the photo above shows that the gutter is used for the water flowing into the drainage system. This is commonly used in driveways everywhere.

iii) Integral Curb

This type of concrete curb are constructed as a part of sidewalk too. As you see in the photo above, the concrete curb is joining concrete sidewalk. Normally it’s cast-in-situ, which mean the concrete curb is constructed on the spot at the site.

iv) Kassel Curb

Kassel curb is purposely constructed for the buses especially in bus stops. Normally the basic concrete curb has a lower level and it’s difficult to passenger to enter the bus which has higher steps. Kassel curb has been raised up to improve accessibility for mobility-impaired passenger.

v) Precast Curb

Of course, there are some precast concrete curb too which is produced in the factory and bring to site whenever there is an usage of relevant concrete curb. Precast concrete curb will be used if the client need a faster completion of work, of course the prices for those precast concrete curb will be slightly higher than cast-in-site curb.

Pattern Of Concrete Road Curb

There is many patterns for concrete curb, as you see in the photo above, there are angle, round, mower, multi lighted, angle lighted, walkway, parking, square, wheel block and etc. Rounded concrete curbs are most commanly used for driveways that the sidewalk has grassy setback from the street.

The photo named “Straight Concrete Road Curb” above is using a wheel block concrete curb, while this pattern are commonly used for the sidewalk that lay with premix.

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