Samsung C&T Engineering and Construction Group is continually engaged in construction activities around the world, including housing, civil engineering, and plant projects. In Samsung C&T’s YouTube series, specialists explain construction-related topics of interest to the general public. The videos are subtitled in English, so global audiences can watch and learn general information about construction and buildings.
Samsung C&T shares health tips for modern homes
Home is where we spend much of our time, so it is important to maintain a comfortable and healthy environment. The first two videos that we will introduce teach how to maintain the air quality in your home as much as possible and also how to identify and prevent the environmental circumstances in which mold grows.
Poor air quality can lead to health problems, so we need to know what things can improve or worsen the quality of air in our homes. In this video, a specialist from Samsung C&T who works on developing products that improve the air inside Raemian brand apartments, which are built by Samsung C&T E&C Group, explains how to improve home air quality.
The best way to improve air quality is to lower the amount of microparticles and chemicals that are harmful to human health. Cooking food in the kitchen (especially frying) is the main cause of such microparticles and chemicals. When cooking, people should turn on the range hood and open the windows until 30 minutes after cooking has finished. When cooking fish or meat, use paper foil around the pan or a lid on top.
Furthermore, people should use an air purifier to remove fine dust particles from indoor spaces and ventilate their apartment for 30 minutes three times a day, even when not cooking. Of course, changing filters in purifiers, air conditioners, and range hoods regularly is important, too. And it goes without saying that smoking indoors is not good for air quality or health.
If people follow these pieces of advice, they will maintain good air quality, which is conducive to health.
Turning to mold, it is a problem that can occur in any inhabited space. There is often a misconception that mold is caused by dew condensation. In this video, a Samsung C&T E&C Group specialist in preventing dew condensation inside Raemian Apartments clears up common misconceptions about both condensation and mold. Instead of one causing the other, he explains that both condensation and mold have the same root cause, which is high humidity. He then goes on to explain how to prevent both from occurring in the home.
Mold should be avoided because it can be harmful to people’s health. The best way to do this is to remove environmental conditions that mold likes by reducing humidity to below 60%. To reduce humidity, we need to ventilate our indoor spaces to let air circulate to every corner of a room. It is best to circulate the indoor air twice a day for 30 minutes.
Reducing humidity through ventilation will cut down dew condensation and also simultaneously reduce mold growth, which is good for human health.
Understanding the top and bottom of large construction projects
For people who do not work in the construction industry, some parts of the process of building a large structure might seem mysterious: for example, how the top of a skyscraper is built and how deep the piles under a building or bridge must go down into the ground. Samsung C&T E&C Group’s new video series helps people to understand these things in an easy way.
The Burj Khalifa building in Dubai is 163 floors high, measuring 828 meters. But how was its top made? How did they get the wet concrete up so high? Concrete must be laid within 90 minutes after mixing, otherwise it becomes hard, so it is important to move it from the ground where it is mixed up to the desired place quickly.
To build the top of a skyscraper, high-pressure pump technology is used to push the liquid concrete up high to the top of the skyscraper (like blowing air forcefully through a blocked drinking straw). It is pumped up in 3-meter intervals and then enters a distributor at the top, which dispenses the liquid concrete to where it is needed.
What about when constructing a bridge or building — how is its foundation made solid to hold the building’s weight so that it doesn’t sink into the ground or become damaged in an earthquake? That job is performed by piles, long vertical supports, that are pushed deep into the ground to the bedrock. Steel pipes are the best choice. The depth to which the piles should be driven depends on the weight of the structures, the thickness of the layers of sand and alluvial gravel, and the distance to the hard bedrock. Depth can vary from place to place, but 30 meters is usually deep enough.
When building a bridge over the sea, piles are also driven into the bedrock below the seabed. For example, the piles for Incheon Bridge, Korea’s longest bridge (and built by Samsung C&T E&C Group), were inserted 60 meters below the ocean floor, equivalent to a 20-story building. The deepest piles in the world to date are under the Petronas Towers in Malaysia. Some of those piles go down 120 meters to the bedrock.
Samsung C&T E&C Group has extensive experience in construction work on foundations as well as at great heights essential for the construction of high-rise buildings and bridges.
Sharing and building knowledge
Samsung C&T E&C Group carries out housing projects and makes efforts to improve the quality of life for residents. Additionally, it leads large-scale projects such as civil engineering and plants worldwide.
With its deep and broad experience in the construction industry, Samsung C&T E&C Group has much knowledge to share, ranging from how to live healthy lives in modern buildings to how to pump concrete 600 meters high into the sky and also how to drive steel piles deep into the ground.
Samsung C&T E&C Group is striving to improve people’s access to construction knowledge and make it more familiar to them by explaining concepts in an easy-to-understand manner. We will continue to inform readers and the public about the continued leadership and innovation of Samsung C&T E&C Group.
