Concrete Construction Question

[Ozarker]

When I was a teenager my brother and I helped my dad pour a footer for a 24X24 garage using a mixer and a wheelbarrow. It worked like this, I mixed while my brother took the mix to dad. Dad poured it and worked that section while brother came back for the next load that I had ready by the time he got there. Mom kept the iced tea coming. We kept that up until the entire footer was done.

It was about 4 back breaking hours if I remember corectly.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

If you look at the post on the pond preservation you'll see we're mixing on site with a mixer. It's nothing but a thing.

I have a custom bucket I've made that holds a third plus of yard for my skid steer. It moves the concrete quickly.

Yesterday in a couple of hours we mixed, placed and rough finished five yards.

Again, nothing but a thing.

Well, it was a hundred and one and the youngest one feeding the mixer is fifty seven, me.

You can rent a nine cubic foot mixer at your tool rental source. You can have your material suppller deliver to you "remix". Remix is when they take concrete sand and rock (I use three quarter) and remix it with the front end loader before putting it into the truck.

With remix you don't have to put in one sand then one gravel, then one sand, then one gravel, etc.

With a nine cubic foot mixer the formula I've used forever, well, forty years, is ten gallons of water, one bag of portland cement. We throw in the bag whole and aim for a mixing blade. I will admit those ninety four pound bags do get a little heftier feeling as the day wears on.

Then we add aggregrate, sand and gravel, until the mix is right for us. If I want it richer I add less water or more portland.

A couple of tips I've found out the hard way.

1. Put in the water and a couple of shovel fulls of aggregrate first and then the portland. The aggregrate sorta kinda helps with the declumping of the portland.

2. Start with the barrel of the mixer almost level when putting in the water and portland. You don't have to lift the stuff as far and more importantly, you're taking full advantage of the action of the mixing paddles.

Then as the material starts to splash out bring the barrel up.

3. The most common mistakes I see made by newbies helping me out is not working the barrel up in stages and using the paddles to full advantage. They set it up at a steep angle and then we have wet stuff on top and we have to dig out a cluster of crap at the bottom. Dirty word and butt chewing generator if there ever was one.

The other thing is the testosterone gets going and two boys of whatever age will be doing one upmanshipping filling the mixer. Then it don't get mixed well.

So set a pace and just do it. When you've got a mixer full and it's right you'll have three six cubic foot contractor's wheelbarrows as full as you want for moving some distance.

The motorized Georgia buggies work great. But if you're going to use them with the mixer then you have to dig a ramp to get them under the mixer. The mixer naturally dumps into a wheelbarrow. But all the Georgia buggies I've used have too high a sides.

With a full load the trail to the site must be relatively smooth and accessible for the Georgia buggies. They will get stuck and they can wear you out. I once used them to put sixty some yards four hundred feet from the trucks. You learn to turn the handles opposite of the direction you want to go. And you learn to hold on with a death grip. Because if you don't and a bump grabs the steering wheels you will think you're going to die.

If you have a quick attach FEL then you might find a concrete dispensing bucket at a rental yard. They're not made like mine, but then few things are. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[JimMorrissey]

John,

I was thinking the same. The name for these types of foundations is "rubble trech foundation". I huge proponent of this technique was Frank Lloyd Wright. He found this techinque to be perfectly stable and built on a rubble trench regularly.

You could use your BX to dig and fill the trench. All you need is the crush stone and maybe some drains if you wish. There is lots of reading material on the Web about Rubble Trench foundations. Just because it's not "standard practice" in your area doesn't mean it's not a sound technique. There's lots of variability from coast to coast.

You still have to make a grade beam from concrete, but it would be a lot easier to deal with. Use the BX to transport all the materials to the site, then mix it all yourself right next to the project.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

We laid out, formed up, and poured about thirty feet of footing or beam for a wall we're doing on a pond.

It took seven mixer loads, two and a third yards. When you add the two yards that's in the piers thirty feet of wall has a four plus yard concrete footing.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

After the comments about how hard it was to mix your own in a mixer on site.

We mixed the seven loads, poured it, and finished it out in fifty minutes.

Here's a shot of the mixer before we started.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Then after we'd finished and were putting in gravel and water to wash out the barrel.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Keep in mind that again today it was at or near a hundred degrees and two of us old guys did the feeding of the mixer. He'll be fifty eight this month and I just turned fifty seven last month.

It's only work.

 

[Allen2]

You guys are an inspiration. My father was 58 when he and I were pouring 50' x 10' slabs in a barn thirty-some years ago. All this has brought back fond memories of that. It's where I got all of my construction experience that I still use to this day.
Allen

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Dad's are great aren't they?

I taught my dad how to climb telephone poles with hooks when he was fifty four. Everyone else in the class was half of his age or less. He did great.

I like to tell everyone I got my work ethic from my dad.

It took me awhile to figure how it happend but I think I understand it now.

Over the dinner table he'd talk about his work and the people he worked around. He was impressed with people who worked hard, didn't quit or cry when they got hurt, and were quick on their feet when it came to figuring things out.

It wasn't until I was in my forties that I figured out I'd been working hard all these years to get his approval. Then came the revelation that I'd had it since I was in my twenties. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I was fortunate enough to work side by side with my dad for many years. He never gave me a "good job". But I think he had enough respect for me to expect me to know when I'd done good.

I'll be seeing him in October. We don't say much. We don't have to. My wife says there's something uncanny about how we can move like we're one when we're doing something.

If I was to wish something for my son it would be for him to have the kind of father I have.

 

[jim_wilson]

I ended up buying a small mixer a couple of months ago and just had the chance to use it last weekend. The one I ended up getting - after looking extensively - was a Multiquip Mix and Go - Mix N Go . I bought it from a masonry supply house up in the Leominster area whose name escapes me at the moment. Previously I had been mixing concrete using a mortar tray and a shovel - and had had enough of that. To me the mixer means that any amount of concrete I have to mix that does not warrant getting in a truckload - meaning 1 yard or less - is not an insurmountable task now. The hardest part is lifting the bag and dumping it into the mixer barrel. Short answer - I think they are worth it. I would look around before buying the Home Depot unit though - the Multiquip seemed better built to me than the ones I saw at Home Depot.