10
Jan

Concreting piles on water

During October 2022, we have been engaged in technical consultations with our potential client regarding his interesting and challenging project that was planned to start early November.

Interesting and difficult project

The project involved construction of a new power line and the challenging part was that all the work will have to be done on water using a barge as a base.

This type of work imposes a lot of difficulties, mainly related to preparation and delivery of fresh concrete mix to the placement area at the right time.

Several points that had to be considered:

  • Production of high quality fresh mix:

Apart from the fact that concrete has to be prepared on site, meaning on the barge itself as once the barge leaves the pier, concrete can not be delivered onto the barge in the open water, it also has to be prepared in a very short period of time (on demand concrete), as the pouring and placement of concrete depends on various factors, including rapidly changing weather conditions. Sometimes there will only be a 30-60 minutes time frame during which the mix will have to be prepared and placed while the weather permits it. This of course means that concrete will have to be produced right on the barge. This in turn brings us to the second difficulty of this project.

  • Limited space for maneuverability

The barge itself was not a small one, but bear in mind, all aggregates, lifting equipment etc. had to be located on the barge leaving absolutely no space for things like wheel loader or any other supporting equipment for conventional concrete production machinery, such as volumetric mixer. Realistically, the barge would only accommodate one extra piece of machinery. In this respect Carmix was a perfect solution as it is mobile, does not require any additional equipment, it is equipped with a high capacity water pump which allows it to load water for the mix without any additional supporting devices.

Another huge advantage in favour of Carmix was the rotating drum, meaning that we would not have to move the mixer around. It will be located stationary and discharge concrete into the post simply by turning the drum to the necessary angle and using discharge chute extensions to make sure the mix is placed evenly.

  • Pre Packed aggregates

Since the job was done on a barge and in open water, the aggregates could not just be piled on the deck, as you would do at your regular job site. First of all it was related to environmental issues. Cement dust and other debris could easily be blown off deck in windy weather which will raise a lot of unnecessary questions from local environmental authorities. Secondly, it is the matter of available space, everything needs to be very compact to fit on the barge. As a result, the customer chose to use pre packed bags of aggregates that were emptied directly into the drum so we would just need to weigh it according to the mix design and add water. This was only possible with Carmix as it has load cells system weighting aggregates that are placed into the drum and not into the loading bucket as most of the hydraulically operated weighing systems do.

Carmix is the perfect solution

These three points indicated that Carmix is the best solution for this challenging project. So after everything was agreed, at the end of October 2021, we loaded Carmix 3500TC onto the truck and shipped it from Las Vegas to Texas, where the preparation for the project was taking place.

Once the client was ready to start, our technical specialist arrived at the jobsite and spent a couple of days with the client to make sure the operator knew what he was doing and the whole process was running smoothly.

We always pay a great deal of attention to making sure, not only Carmix is fully ready for the job, but also all the involved personnel knows how everything has to be done to reach the maximum capacity of Carmix!

Test mix

Another important matter was to ensure that the mix that we are making has all the characteristics of the mix that was planned for by the engineers of this project. That`s why before going out onto the water, we made a test mix, which then was strength tested and showed that within 3 days from production, it gained 4000 PSI strength. Client was fully satisfied with this result and we were fully ready to go out and start pouring posts.

1 post normally took around 5 cubic yards of mix to fill. With a total of over 11 posts, we were looking at around 60-70 cubic yards of mix in total.

This project is a great example of how carmix can be used to solve the most difficult and challenging problems that any construction company can face during their operations.

Our client is very happy with the result and will definitely consider Carmix in their future projects.

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