Mixing my own concrete to save money (the farmers way of concreting)

welcome to another Tom Lam farm video so let's talk about concrete as anyone who has laid concrete before knows it is very expensive and I thought well I'm sure we can do it cheaper and mix it ourselves and over the years I have mixed it myself so I've had like a barrel mixer as seen here but trying to load it can be a bit hard work and you can't measure what you're putting in very easily also putting the cement in it gets very dusty and cement dust blows everywhere and covers everything in cement dust I've also got a pan mixer that we can use but it's not really fast enough for what we want I got a pan mixture on the back of the tractor I mix a lot of concrete up just put over the pipes but that can also be very messy and you still don't really know how much you're putting in unless you weigh every single bucket and measure all the water out and it just when you've got a big porw of like you know maybe 50 to 100 cubic meters to do it's just not ideal really so my idea or my solution I have a friend of mine with a volumetric concrete mixer so for those of you who don't know what one of them is you fill like a sand Hopper on one side you fill a gravel Hopper on the other then you fill it with cement and it's got all its own water tanks on and it mixes itself as it comes out so you don't get no waste and also as well the brilliant thing about these lores are it it measures everything for you as it's coming out so literally you just dump it in the hopper as fast fast as you can and it just keeps coming and coming and coming so hopefully this is going to be able to it's like a bit of an experiment really today we're going to do like a 10 cubic meter PO today and hopefully if it works well in the future we're going to start doing like big sections of the yard where we can concrete it so this is the test area just here pit is in there we need to roll it ready for concrete it's all been rolled so now we need to go and mix the concrete in the Lorry and see if it works so the materials we've got to be putting in this is the sharp sand one material then over this side we've got the gravel 10 to 20 mil gravel that's all going to go in and then we got the cement in these seed bags we got the cement so we've got a shoot on the bottom so we can fill the hopper up with it and we've got a few of these and we'll just like I say we'll just keep sh we'll shove everything in and the Lorry does everything so we don't need to bother weighing it and messing around so let's load the Lorry so I forgot to say as well I've work I used to work at a cement factory for 5 years so I learned a lot about cment so the stuff in this bag here that I've filled it up with is called sem1 the stuff that that you get from Builders Merchants in like little bags is classed as sem to now the difference between those two things is this stuff here is 100% cement whereas the stuff in bags is only 65% cement and then the rest of it diluted with like Limestone gypser fly ash anything like that so all that that means is this will set a lot harder and you'll be able to drive a lot heavier stuff over it whereas in time maybe 72 I mean it's okay but it might crack up but because we're carrying heavy kit off across the top of everything you know it will set harder and hopefully it'll withstand the test of time as hopefully it is as e as ABC can't see hardly out this window cuz it's uh bit Frosty this morning we're lifting the old cement up so that goes in this Hopper air on the back which is uh which is full of cement here we go down in there he's going to shake it a bit and pretend he's doing oh he wants me to go oh there we go so we'll put that in there open the shoot and then in this side we got sand so we'll go and put him in there then we got a big tank of water on the front look there we go there go sand oppers full and then in this side we put the gravel so as soon as we put this in we'll go up and have a look and I can uh show you what's what and it goes there's Chris for all your concrete needs Cool Chris so subvention AET that's full in this Hopper and then we've got gravel we' got sand so let's go and get mixing got water oh yeah we've got water at the front and we in this big tank here that's for how many liters of water does that hold 2,000 2,000 L of water let's go and see it mixing so yeah lot of say water sand gravel cement and then we're going to adjust all these to what we want it inside of here is the big mix of screw so we'll have a look at that at the end sand and gravel comes down here cement comes out of here but by just in these here it'll open like these little shoots just there look which lets sand and gravel out we can't see cuz of the sun we're changing it from a c35 yeah and we'll up it to a C40 C40 c45 whatever H C4 want c45 can yeah stronger the better cuz it'll go off quicker cuz it's cold day what we have enough cement I don't know we'll find out we'll have to get some more you know what you're doing no no me neither not on the Saturday no not on the Saturday that looks like that works well it's just cuz all the gravel was on it it's hard to push the gravel down ah putting the water on mix the screw going in there coming out of here look at that that's better not as wet now he's the vibrator to keep vibrating the cement out when it gets a bit stuck showes how many liters of water a minute we're putting in what's that nearly at the end now we'll get that out of a full Lor load hopefully getting some mesh in just cuz we haven't used fibers what do you think me doing this yeah going different oh lovely we're washing it out now there's a mixing screw and that's it e he's easy as ABC yeah how about that laid washed a all within half an hour goodbye ah a off clear off don't go on there don't go on the concrete don't go on the don't go on the concrete right you little I hope I don't come back and the cat's walked all over it everywhere so we're just going to let it go off now for a few hours cuz it's a quite a cold day so we'll come back about dinner time didn't actually take that long to do actually so it's quite good and I've got a print out here from the Lorry so we used we've had 7.3 cubic M of concrete going here cement 2.6 uh ton sand 5.8 ton Stone which is obviously the gravel 7.2 ton and then the water 1,500 L but obviously about 300 that would be uh washing out and cleaning out so yeah we're going to come back and power flat it and uh hopefully it's uh hopefully it's going to go quite well right so I can get on it now so it's ready for power floating but what has happened here the cat has been back and walked on the concrete amazing God sake the cat hopefully the power float will fill this in just roughing it up we'd usually do like a brush finish on this but cuz it's quite a high traffic area we're going to go over it again with a pan so it roughs it up and then it uh it's a lot harder wearing how is that look bit of water come out the door there but it's fine so yeah just got one more little Finishing Touch to do on it which I'm going to show you I best put the wife's name as well she's been very supportive and then I I F it hold on what's that look like not very good wanted to say aty but never mind CH it the dice as well I'm not going to fit oh yeah oh I can I add a bit what do you want to add a love part there you go what Hood you got on as well oh yeah remember if you want some toml merchandise link is in the bio on the Tom Lam Instagram it's lovely stuff so yeah and there we have the first experimental concrete mix it's gone quite well like I say we usually brush it like that but by panning it like this I'm just going to pan it again in a minute just to make it nice and like level get off get off go away yeah so where was I yeah I'm just going to pan it again get it all finished off and uh hopefully it will look nice and tidy and this just gives it a nice bit of grip compared to the BR the brush does give it grip as well but over time it does wear out as well so so I hope you've enjoyed myself Mixing concrete loading video first part hopefully one of many so um let me know what you think in the comments and I'd also like to know what does everybody else do do they mix their own concrete do they buy it far away some comments and I'll see if I can get back to them you know give me a few tips or whatever I'll see you in the next video see you later just before I go thought i' give you a quick sneak preview of the next project

Channel: Tom Lamb

Views: 53,055

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Id: eksm4SfdqjM

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2024