Concrete barrowing rates..

You should get 4 cu ft in a builder's barrow. So 7 barrows to a cu yd leading to 46 barrow loads in total.

You're talking about 6 tons

Don't try. See if you can find someone who will pump it.

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!)

John

Have I got this wrong?

A standard bulders barrow is 90 litres which is a tad over 3 cubic feet not

a cubic metre of concrete weighs about 2400kg which is about 2.5 tons

if the OP really meant 6 cubic metres when he said 6 metres

then the total would be approx 15 tonnes not 6

on this basis most of it will have set on the front before there is any chance of moving it

Regards

Tony

A friend of mine looked into doing much the same and concluded that the only practical way was to get it pumped.

Colin Bignell

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 !

AWEM

tony sayer brought next idea :

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

That accords with my wet finger.

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.

Rule of thumb is cubic yard of aggregate is about 2 tons, with spaces for about half a ton of water. Cement doesn't add much at all.

Oops sorry, I got that wrong. We didn't have 7 cubic metres, we had

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.

Robert

more people would have allowed a short rest from time to time.

Don't think you can get 7m^3 in one lorry can you?

You can have a retardant mixed in to delay setting. they would struggle with big builds if they couldn't control the time to set.

In article , tony sayer scribeth thus

OK to all that replied..

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

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

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!.....

I think it's a full load of those big readymix lorries. That's where I got the confusion from.

Robert