Concrete Mixer - Size Slab

[Ken(Ark)]

I want to pour a small slab of concrete to be able to pull a small tractor or truck on so I can work on it . It would be nice to have concrete to roll a floor jack or creeper on .

My Question is what size slab is practical and about what size is too big for one man to mix . It is a remote location and getting a cement truck , even a small one is probably not going to happen .

I have done a little of everything and am not afraid to tackle this project . I have done some sidewalks with 10 - 12 bags of quickcrete , but your guy's can sure save a fellow some headaches with advice / pointers .

I have not bought a mixer but I would be glad to , as I would like to do a few small slabs , porch steps , sidewalk , etc . I could do a 10 x 20 slab in sections if that's the I have to ? I would like to go bigger but I would also like to win the lotto , LOL .

Thanks - Ken .

 

[jm.]

Ken assuming you could get a real good solid base and was working toward a 10 x 20 poured 4 inches thick (which is minimum) you would need something like 15 90 lb bags of cement , around 1300lb of sand and close to 2,500 lb of nice clean small rock. I have a mixer that pours 1/3 yard at a batch and we have poured small pours like you are planning but I have three loader tractor, and plenty of help. You could put you forms to make it 10 x 10 on each pour and buy yourself you are still going to get played out trying to di it all with out a cold pour. But yes it can be done.

 

[JMOR]

(quoted from post at 15:42:36 12/24/18) Ken assuming you could get a real good solid base and was working toward a 10 x 20 poured 4 inches thick (which is minimum) you would need something like 15 90 lb bags of cement , around 1300lb of sand and close to 2,500 lb of nice clean small rock. I have a mixer that pours 1/3 yard at a batch and we have poured small pours like you are planning but I have three loader tractor, and plenty of help. You could put you forms to make it 10 x 10 on each pour and buy yourself you are still going to get played out trying to di it all with out a cold pour. But yes it can be done.

TDT & "can be done" sure goes hand in hand with best wishes & damn difficult.

 

[Ken(Ark)]

Thanks for the input , That's enough info to say I pass . Seems I can't do half of what I could do years ago . Guess I will save up and hire a bigger slab and be done with it .

 

[VACLee]

Might want to check your formula. I believe you have 2 1/2 yards worth of cement but only 1 yard of sand and stone. He will have a strong mix but will come up a little short. Lee

 

[Ken(Ark)]

Yep , BTDT , I remember parking in the dirt driveway on Friday night as it started snowing ( rare here ) and having to spend Saturday and Sunday changing out a transmission so I could get to work on Monday .

I have a shop with dirt floor and HEATERS so I lay down a sheet of plywood . Seems as soon as I get under the truck my back muscles say "HA HA" your getting older .

 

[PJH]

On a good solid sub-base, you could pour it in 4' square sections and take all week if you wanted to. Do a good job of finishing the mating edges of the sections. That's not the optimum method, but if you're by yourself and can't get a truck in position, that is a solution that won't kill you. I'm gonna pour three locations in sections like that next spring.

It's pretty easy to bite off more than you can chew with a concrete pour. After the first one, you might feel frisky enough to pour a 4X8 section the next day.

I've worked on paving jobs where we would pour a mile of slip-form 24' pavement 10 inches thick every day, but we had equipment that dreams are made of, and no lack of manpower. Now I'm an old man, and a couple of 4' squares are a day's work for me, ha.

 

[jm.]

Lee glad you check me out, I did cam up with the 2.5 yds for the slab but did not do the sand and stone right. And when I looked at it I was thinking dang that sure is not much rock.. Getting old I guess. I have poured my share and like I told him with three loaders and plenty of help it can be done but sure not a one man job.. LOL

 

[Tony in SD]

Good decision Ken. There are only 3 things you need to know about concrete; 1. It gets hard 2. It cracks 3. Hire it done. 3 being the most important thing to know.

 

[Dick L]

I have poured a bunch of cement with my 1/3 yard mixer when I was in my 30's. I didn't screet the pours. I drove stakes of 1/8" rebar to a chock line at floor level and floated it to the stakes with a bull floot. Then stepped the stakes over when I was level to them. That gets it down to one man. A hand mixed pour to do what you to have would need to be done in more than one day. That is a lot of gravel to shovel. Out side without roof and walls 4" thick is going to crack where you do not want it to crack without being scored. Probly turn out best if formed and poured for three or four days each with expansion material between pours. In my late teens helped pour a 30' x 40' barn floor. One old mixer, One man on each side shoveling out of six men taking turns shoveling. Two long days as I remember. Might have been three days.

 

[ChuckMa]

WE poured my driveway in 10x10 sections, using a old sears drum mixer been twenty years since but i think we did thirteen sections 6 inches
deep. I did one section a day, to let it set. Did have a loader to retrieve sand and rock. Lot of work and a lot of sweat but saved about $2000 in
the end.
Chuck

 

[Steve@Advance]

The last slab I did, about a 10x20, I wasn't sure about tackling it myself, and that was a few years ago when I wasn't afraid of n'uttin!

What I did was all the prep work, the fill, leveling, forms, and steel.

Then hired a contractor to do the actual pour and finish. They were able to get a truck in, which I didn't think they could.

Glad I did, no way I could have done that myself. On top of everything, there came up a surprise rain storm, right in the middle of finishing it!

They knew just what to do to save it, I would have been in deep trouble!

 

[Dick L]

gees, 3/8" rerod not 1/8". The pours in the 50"s we used bank gravel. Several gravel banks in the area had a good mix of stone and sand without clay. Some bank gravel has a fair amount of clay.

 

[Southern Ray]

No. 4
You work concrete or it will work you.

 

[PJH]

Jeez - why make it hard? Just use Sackrete, or another brand and do it a little at a time. Forget about the gravel/sand/cement. Buy a few sacks, mix it up and fill the forms. Next payday, buy a few more sacks. I get the hint that money might be an issue, so do it a payday at a time. There's nothing wrong with managing your money.

Some folks don't like Sackrete - I had an engineer that I worked with who made compression tests on cured samples of Sackrete and he rated it very poorly. But you can add a measured scoop of Portland Cement to each bag and up the compressive strength. That's what I do, and it has worked out well (with no testing). I don't build bridges around here.

Our local ready mix companies have a four cubic yard minimum order. They also have an unloading time limit, then they CAN go on overtime. If you can't get the truck to the pour, and the driver is in a bad mood, it CAN cost you dearly. Most drivers are very helpful and cheerful, but. . .

I'm gonna use Sackrete (or an equivalent) on my little pours next spring.

 

[sms]

My brother and I did what is now my shop floor years ago. Mixed about a
yard at a time and just did sections. Works fine. Had a good base, didn't
know about rebar then, it has held up fine and I have had a D7 and
dumptrucks parked on it.

 

[Stephen Newell]

If it's that remote of a location do you have electricity? A cheap cement mixer would need power. They make a gas powered cement mixer but too expensive to buy for a job now and then around the house. A cement mixer only makes the job a little easier, you still have to lift the bags up and pour the contents into it. When I use a mixer for a larger job I put the bags of cement in the front loader of my tractor and suspend it over the mixer. Then I use a ladder and get up in the bucket to pour the cement mix. You could also make a wooden box and mix the cement with a hoe. I have done as much as 120 bags before like that. It took me most of a day to do it.

As far as mixers, I use the Harbor Freight mixer. Over the years I've mixed hundreds of bags of cement with it.

 

[showcrop]

Just as an example of how it can go bad: This guy I know who has always known more than most people about pretty much everything, in the house where he built on an addition, the basement floor has a pile of concrete three feet high under one of the two front windows, and the floor slopes down from front to back. He was by himself and told the driver that he wanted the mix dry.

 

[greg oliver]

Ken, I have done quite a lot of concrete work with just a small crew. We do the excavation as well so that we know it has a solid base. In remote locations we would use the skid steer for transport and placement even in buildings. Check with some local contractors we are not all greedy. Gives you someone to yell at if you don't like it as well! We could bang that out in an afternoon unless you want it polished like glass. Merry Christmas

 

[cwtech]

Depending on the type of soil you have where you want the slab, investigate soil/cement.

Bags of dry Portland rototilled into a suitable soil or stonedust, compacted and built up into a 4-6" layer, will form a very hard pad which may be suitable for your needs.

 

[DR. EVIL]

A slab 10 ft by 20 ft, maybe even wider like 12 to 15 ft wide and 24 ft long would maybe be big enough.

I drove ready-mix truck two summers years ago. Company I drove for only had two 6x6 mixer trucks, but if
it wasn't slick I could go anywhere they went with my power divider locked on. We had two 1970 White
Construktor's that had Super-Single tires on all 6 wheels, they did not like mud or slick surfaces.

I had mixers places most people wouldn't drive their ATV. Like pouring walls for a house addition,
excavator dug out the basement, piled the dirt up so somebody (me) could back around the 90 degree corner
while staying on top of the 10 ft high pile of dirt. When I got where they wanted me it was about 8 feet
from the ground to the running board of my truck, had to walk back to rear of truck on the frame and
fenders. When the truck rocked side-to-side the dirt under my tires rolled down the side of the bank.

So yes, Give the driver a story to tell his grandkids, pour a 16x24 slab, deeper footings around the
outside, wire mesh reinforcing, steel trowel finish.

 

[MarkB_MI]

I personally put a one cubic yard limit on the size of slab I'll do by hand. Your slab is between 2.5 (4") and 3.7 cubic yards (6"). That's a pretty big job to mix by hand, although people used to do it all the time.

Note that most redi-mix outfits have a minimum 4 yard charge, so if you have any other slabs you need to pour, you might as well form those up at the same time.

When I lived in Cairo, I seldom if ever saw a redi-mix truck. Concrete was typically mixed on site in small batches. Seeing all those cold joints in new apartment buildings was a bit scary; Cairo has had some pretty bad earthquakes.

 

[Destroked 450]

I have a small 24x28 work shop built into my 28x72 machine shed, wish I had made it 30x72 so that the shop would have been 2' deeper.
For working on my mid size tractors and being able to split one for clutch or trans work I'd want a min of 20' long and 15' wide, the width gives room to maneuver a engine lift (cherry picker) around the side of the tractor to remove the trans on a triple split.
My pickup is 22' long so I only have 6' in front with the rear bumper against the door in my 28' shop.

I did all of the ground work, forming, leveling, stone compacting and rebar, then hired someone to pour and level the concrete.
24'wide x28'long x5.5" deep with 12" curtain drop took around 13 yards of concrete. Because I had done the prep work labor to do the pour was about half the cost of the concrete, it was done in a few hours and I was using that floor a week later.
With todays 6 wheel drive mixers unless you have low tree limbs they can go nearly any place a two wheel drive pickup can.

 

[C.Amick]

I have a 3-point hitch mixer for a tractor. It requires a hydraulic hookup to dump. It mixes around 1/3 of a cubic yard at a time.
I have done slabs that big with it. If you pour it in sections, make the joint vertical and make sure the reinforcing steel
continues through the joint. May want to think about using dowel rods at the joint.

 

[Inno]

I can't remember the details but I do know it can be done........in 1986 my Dad, my brother and I poured footings for a 28x36 garage, some of them as deep as 4' as we were up on a rock. Then we mixed and poured the entire floor using a small gas powered mixer. I would have been maybe 14 at the time. My brother did the shoveling/mixing, I ran the wheelbarrow and my Dad did all of the finish work. If I recall correctly we did the slab in two halves. Would I do it now? Probably not........although I'm about as stubborn as my old man was. Only problem doing it this way is that you would have a hard time getting a consistent smooth finish. For this application he did a broom finish which turned out pretty well.

 

[zinniman1]

For small jobs I use 5 gal buckets with a drywall mixer and 1/2 in drill. Will break your wrist if your not careful. 2 people to mix, One on drill. one on bags, 1 to pour, and
1 to finish. can overlap in the beginning and end. Need a lot of bags. 1/2 cubic foot per bag. Earl