Strengthen Your Next Project By Using Steel

Posted on: 25 October 2018

With over 5 million tonnes of steel produced in Australia every year, it is no surprise that steel is one of the country's favourite materials for use in the creation of almost everything from railways to skyscrapers and everything in between. If you are constructing a new house or small business building, then you should consider using steel. Not only is it widely available, but there are many benefits that it has over other, comparable materials.

Strong

It is actually a misnomer to refer to steel as metal, although the term is often used to describe it. Steel is actually an alloy of iron and differing amounts of carbon and other metals like chromium (depending on the type of steel you want) which means that it is not, strictly speaking, a metal, which has to be the pure elemental form you can get out of the earth. The advantage of steel as an alloy is that it is purpose-built to be stronger than iron alone. Put simply, steel is the result of hundreds of years of testing to come up with a strong building material, and that is the reason it is so widely used in construction. 

Easy To Install

Steel is much easier to prefabricate than timber and other building materials like concrete, which means that there is very little chance of a mistake when using steel. You can also usually assemble the steel parts together offsite if there is little room to move on the actual site. Due to this ability to be extremely accurate when designing the steel portion of your structure, there is barely ever any wastage, which saves you money when it comes to disposing of material you paid for but ended up not needing.

Add On Later

Steel is a very good building material because it lends itself well to be added on to or updated later on, after it is installed. Steel's aforementioned ability to be made extremely precisely means that if you wish to add on an extension, you can attach these new steel parts to the old ones very easily with little structural rework. Other building materials, specifically timber, concrete, glass and more, are simply not as able to be customised because of their one-of-a-kind nature. It is much harder, and more expensive, to add on to a timber frame and keep it structurally sound. 

Safer 

Whether you are using steel in a residential or commercial building, it will help improve safety in various areas of a building, specifically in the roof. Steel is much more fire resistant than timber, which could end up saving your life if the worst should happen. It is also not affected by termites or other insect invaders. If you want maximum safety in a building, you should really choose steel to protect against these threats. 

Contact a steel sales company to learn more.

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