Anyone got a decent idea how long it would take a couple of not terribly fit blokes to barrow six metres of concrete from the front of a house along a narrow side passage say 8 metres length and tip it .. laying it out isn't that critical as such just the on-site time thats crucial!..
Surely the laying time is crucial too? I thought ready-made sets quicker than home-made (and that therefore it'd be setting before you'd get half-way through your SIX tons!)
Ok - I looked at Wickes web site. they said 120litres
mmmm. I'm sure you are right - it's getting on for 40 years since I last barrowed concrete. I thought a cu yd was about 1 ton, but clearly I misremembered.
A friend of mine looked into doing much the same and concluded that the only practical way was to get it pumped.
Colin Bignell
I would agree. 3 cu ft of concrete starts off easy to manage but rapidly gets heavier and heavier as time progresses! I've just laid 8 cu M in a nice easy to get at slab, 6 cuM came as ready mix, and 26 mixer loads to do the remaining 2 cuM . You know you've done it when you've finished !
As others have suggested, get it pumped into place unless you can find lots more barrows and lots more (very fit) friends. The mix on site concrete providers are much more amenable to helping to get the concrete in the hole for you, might be worth discussing with them.
That's bloody heavy I reckon that 150kg is all you can wheel easily and 6 cu meters is about 15 tonnes. so 100 trips?
Never.
No you are not. 2.5 tonnes a cu meter approx.
First correct thing you have said. I barrowed and spread 20 tonnes of gravel..took me a month in short exhausting bursts. with days spent relaxing and recovering in between.
I could at a pinch get 6-8 barrow loads full of wet cement out of a tonne bag of sand
The people that mix on site will barrow for free, I have no idea how much they charge for the mix though. The one guy mixed and barrowed 1.5 m2 for me in about 30 minutes.
Rule of thumb is a cubic yard of aggregrate is a ton. As is a cubic yard of water. (Not exactly, but close enough for the back of an envelope.)
When you add the water and the cement to the cubic yard of aggregrate, it still only takes up just over a cubic yard, as the water and the cement fill the gaps between the grains, leaving them almost touching. Then the water combines chemically with the cement. Concrete doesn't dry by evaporation, but by a chemical reaction, losing only a small percentage of the water to the surroundings.
Oops sorry, I got that wrong. We didn't have 7 cubic metres, we had
2.5 cubic metres and took 50 minutes with 4 of us.
We always had someone ready to take the next load so more people would not have speeded it up. 7 cu.m it would take not 50 minutes but 2 hours 20 minutes. Which I guess is too long.
Seems to work out 1 Cubic metre, which was what I meant;!, is for most all applications is 2.4 tons. Some suppliers data sheets reckon that as from 20 to 24 barrow loads per metre which it seems to me is about right after all 1 metre sliced up is say a 20th part of that is 1000 x 500 x
100 mm cube so a \decent/ barrows worth.
Problem is it seems that from a time and motion study dun last nite it's some 120 to 144 barrow loads for 6 metres so divide that by 2 say 60 to
72 barrow loads per man but owing to the narrow passage they have to get down and some other factors thats going to take them 1 and a half mins per load and 1.8 hours to do it in which is pushing the limits of time from mix to laid will probably be best part of 2.5 hours.
Its a simple trench fill foundation so not too demanding an application to lay, but even with three blokes there're going to get in each others way so we're investigating other delivery methods .. enquires are on going!.
There is a new firm on the block who have a "mix on site" up to 10 metre machine who will deliver exactly what you want over a longer time scale which looks promising.
Plus my back doesn't like the sound of 70 odd barrows worth!.....
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.