We’ve all seen concrete mixers on the roads making their deliveries, making their way to the building site with their cargo of concrete slowly being churned inside the giant barrel on the back of the truck. Having often large quantities of ready to use concrete delivered in this way can make the job so much easier and save on a lot of man hours, in turn helping to save a lot of money. Although the noisy, dirty trucks may seem very basic and crude, they can in fact offer more specific functions that can help out even more. Whenever anybody mentions that they might need the use of new or used concrete equipment, they may be looking for equipment that is more high tech than you might think.
Self-Loading
Making concrete is not just about getting a bunch of materials and throwing them together. The materials used need to be used in the right proportions otherwise you will not achieve the desired effect. If the concrete is too soft or too hard then you will end up with something that doesn’t set properly or is too brittle, and the whole job would have to be done again.
A self-loading mixer measures precisely the volume of the various components being added so the right consistency of concrete is produced. This can be particularly useful for larger jobs where weighing the volume of ingredients manually can be quite a challenge. Not only does the self-loading mixer ensure the right quantities are used for the right consistency, it also measures the final volume of concrete that will be produced. When it comes to using concrete on a building site, many foremen have been grateful that they’ve had a self-loading mixer at their disposal.
Batching
Construction sites are places where there is not only one job being done, but there can be numerous different tasks being carried out at any one point. This can mean that concrete is used in different places and in different quantities and getting the right quantity to the right site can be tricky. Batching systems not only help to store the raw materials and mix them to provide the perfect concrete, they also help to distribute it as and where needed. With new or used concrete equipment that takes a lot of the headaches out of keeping a construction site productive, they can be a very valuable tool in a construction company’s arsenal.
Getting Concrete to Hard to reach Places
Not all concreting jobs are a case of pouring it out onto the ground and then spreading accordingly. Sometimes concrete is needed in hard to reach places such as on higher floors of a building. Getting concrete to a higher floor, for example, would require a lot of work that will be not only very tiring but also very time consuming. With a concrete pump, however, your concrete can be delivered directly to those harder to reach places meaning all that’s left to do it is to ensure it is distributed evenly. In cutting out a lot of the hard work involved in getting a particular job done, a construction site is able to work much more efficiently and save considerably on costs.
Going Off Road
Have you ever seen a construction site on an even terrain with a smooth surface? Neither have I. Building sites are nearly always places where you can expect to find a loose, even surface with lots of craters, potholes, ruts and other obstacles that can make it difficult for vehicles to get about. Although standard concrete mixers are already fairly robust there are times that something a little better suited to rough terrain is needed and fortunately there are concrete mixers that can go places that a land rover might struggle to reach.
If you need some specialist equipment to help you with your concreting jobs, you will find a range of used concrete equipment that will do just what you need it to.