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Contractors School Online - Building contractor terms Category: Architecture and Buildings > Building contractor information Date & country: 24/09/2013, USA Words: 431

Blast Furnace Slag Cement
A blend cement which incorporates blast furnace slag.

Blended Cement
Portland cement or air-entrained Portland cement combined through blending with such materials as blast furnace slag or pozzolan, which is usually fly ash. May be used as an alternative to Portland cement in mortar.

Block Machine
Equipment used to mold, consolidate and compact shapes when manufacturing concrete masonry units.

Beam
A structural member, typically horizontal, designed to primarily resist flexure.

Bed
The top or bottom of a joint, natural bed; surface of stone parallel to its stratification.

Bedded Area
The surface area of a masonry unit that is in contact with mortar in the plane of the mortar joint.

Belt Course
A continuous horizontal course of flat stones placed in line marking a division in the wall plane.

Baluster
A miniature pillar or column supporting a rail, used in balustrades.

Balustrade
An ornamental fencing consisting of a series of balusters supporting a handrail or molding.

Banker
Bench of timber or stone on which stone is shaped.

Basalt
A dense-textured (aphanitic), igneous rock relatively high in iron and magnesia minerals and relatively low in silica, generally dark grey to black, and feldspathic; a general term in contradistinction to felsite, a light-colored feldspathic and highly siliceous rock of similar texture and origin.

Arkose
A sandstone containing 10% or more clastic grains of feldspar and also called arkosic sandstone, feldspathic sandstone.

Arras
A natural or applied line on the stone from which all leveling and plumbing is measured.

Ashlar
Masonry having a face of square or rectangular stones either smooth or textured.

Back Arch
A concealed arch carrying the backing of a wall where the exterior facing is carried by a lintel.

Backing
The wall or surface to which veneer is secured. The backing material may be concrete, masonry, steel framing or wood framing.

Apex Stone
uppermost stone in a gable, pediment, vault or dome.

Arch
A curved stone structure resting on supports at both extremities used to sustain weight, to bridge or roof an open space.

Architrave
The member of an entablature resting on the capitals of columns and supporting the frieze.

Argillite
A compact sedimentary rock composed mainly of clay and aluminum silicate minerals.

Angle
A structural steel section that has two legs joined at 90 degrees to one another. Used as a lintel to support masonry over openings such as doors or windows in lieu of a masonry arch or reinforced masonry lintel. Also used as a shelf to vertically support masonry veneer and sometimes referred to as a relieving angle.

Air Entraining
The capability of a material or process to develop a system of uniformly distributed microscopic air bubbles in a cementitious paste to increase the workability or durability of the resulting product. Some admixtures act as air entraining agents.

Anchors
Types of stonework include those made of flat stock (strap, cramps, dovetails, dowel, strap and dowel, and two-way anchors) and round stock (rod cramp, rod anchor, eyebolt and dowel, flat-hood wall tie and dowel, dowel and wire toggle bolts).

Agate
A variegated variety of quartz showing colored bands or other markings (clouded, mosslike, etc.).

Aggregate
An inert granular or powdered material such as natural sand, manufactured sand, gravel, crushed stone, slag, fines and lightweight aggregate which, when bound together by a cementitious matrix forms concrete, grout or mortar.

Adhesive Anchor
An anchoring device that is placed in a predrilled hole and secured using a chemical compound.

Admixture
Substance other than prescribed materials of water, aggregate and cementitious materials added to concrete, mortar or grout to improve one or more chemical or physical properties.

Accelerator
A liquid or powder admixture added to a cementitious paste to speed hydration and promote early strength development. An example of an accelerator material is calcium nitrite.

Adhered
Veneer secured and supported through adhesion to an approved bonding material applied over an approved backing.

Abrasive Finish
A flat non-reflective surface finish for marble.

Absorption
The difference in the amount of water contained within a concrete masonry unit between saturated and oven-dry conditions, expressed as weight of water per cubic foot of concrete.