Frequently, customers are asking for an anti-abrasive coating for cellular glass. These products are originally developed for application on cellular glass for industrial equipment. Indeed, vibrating tubes insulated with cellular glass will possibly generate dust because the surface of cellular glass is brittle. With GOOGLE “anti abrasive cellular glass” , the following coatings were found.

A good choice is Temati TDS Foster30-16, which is an organic coating, to be applied by spraying or brushing. This coating has been succesfully tested on GLAPOR cellular glass. This coating is fire resistant but is slightly combustible. It can be applied for a temperature range from -196°C to 130°C. This coating is reinforcing and filling the surface cell walls.

For higher temperatures, HYDROCAL B11 has been tested. This is a reactive gypsum cement, which is filling the surface cells without reinforcing the surface cell walls. On the other hand, this product is absolutely non-combustible. Also this product is succesfully tested on GLAPOR cellular glass.

The above products are well suited to coat cellular glass used for facades but in contact with the inner space of the building. Indeed, more and more, building project developers are looking for alternative building systems without any combustible thermal insulation, mould and rodents. Large dimension GLAPOR cellular glass (3.2 x 1.5 x 0.2 m) in a steel frame, can function as wall AND thermal insulation. Within our knowledge, this is today the only solution.

In some cases, a typical concrete slab could be too heavy for the structure under the slab. Some typical cases are a large football stadion where a large parking is build under the grass. To save weight, expensive cellular glass blocks have to be used instead of a concrete slab. In other cases, ecologic landscape construction, performed with unbonded gravel can become difficult in case of steep hills.

GLAPOR, manufacturer of cellular glass boards and gravel advises to use cement bonded gravel for landscaping instead of cellular glass boards, especially when permeability of water is an advantage. The structure is resistant against freeze and thaw and installation takes much less labour. On top of that, this solution is lot cheaper (about 60€/m³) and guarantees the same negligible creep behaviour as boards.

To demonstrate  the above we have a report (part 1 part2) about recipes for cement bonded gravel. It can be observed that compressive strengths of 1200 kPa are reached with foamed glass gravel with compressive stress of 800 kPa at 30% compaction. The cement bonding increases the mechanical stability with 50% with only a negligble shrinking during installation. Like shown in the report, mixing and transport can be done like ordinary concrete.

One of the nicest examples of landscape construction with GLAPOR foamed glass gravel is performed in Austria by Swarovski and  it contains the musem in Wattens. Indeed, Austria has great architects.