SCP Case Study: Kingsport, Tennessee Salt Sheds
The City of Kingsport, Tennessee has been curing their
sidewalks and exterior concrete projects with SCP
Technology for many years. For one of their new salt
sheds, the city wanted to use the entrance slab as a
means to evaluate the effectiveness of various SCP
Technology options against corrosive salt attack. They
wanted to see what an integral use of SCP products
would provide in comparison to their current P3 Protect
use, compared to their past use of ASTM C309 curing.
The SCP treated sections, integral and spray-treated,
would be placed side-by-side with standard concrete in
order to have a true comparison.
The main slab and storage walls of the salt shed were
cured with P3 Protect, as is the standard for city
concrete. For the evaluations, the entrance slab was
divided with construction joints into four equal sections,
with one load of concrete pouring two sections, each
receiving different curing products, allowing for four
variation panels. The same base concrete mix design
was used for the entire placement. The difference in
the four panels is demonstrated in the
photograph below. Salt was loaded
into the structure less than 60 days
after construction and treatment of
the storage slab and walls..
After only one season of use,
and less than 9 months after
construction, the difference in surface
appearance is strikingly clear. As one
city official put it, “Right there you can see
the difference in the concrete. Whatever the tests show,
that visible difference right there is the reason why we
use SCP for curing our concrete. It just makes it better.”
SCP and the city continue to make regularly scheduled
visits to the project to conduct both visual observations
and surface resistivity readings in order to compare the
long-term effects in this highly aggressive environment.
