The Easy Way to Pour Difficult Concrete Jobs

Placing concrete in hard-to-reach places doesn’t have to be a hard-to-do job. Using the Bobcat® concrete pump has made David Nelson and his employees “a lot more efficient.” D.W. Nelson Concrete Contractor, Stoughton, Wis., owns four Bobcat loaders: a 773, 873H, T190 and T200, along with a Bobcat 334 excavator. Nelson first used the concrete pump to pour a 5,000 sq. ft. concrete slab at a greenhouse. Without it his crews would have had to use wheelbarrows or a power buggy because muddy conditions kept a ready-mix truck some distance from the site. “We poured close to 70-cu.-yd. of concrete that day, averaging a little over 20-yd. per hour and that included tearing down pipe and switching between ready-mix trucks,” Nelson says. He lists the ways that type of productivity is paying-off: Saves money. With his concrete pump, Nelson no longer shells out $500-900 once or twice a week to rent a trailer pump. Because he can pump concrete through windows or other small existing openings, carpenters and home-builders save the time and aggravation of having to cut access holes through sub-floors. Plus, compared to concrete trucks, the Bobcat equipment protects underground utilities, driveways, sidewalks and turf from the impact of heavyweight concrete trucks. Saves time. “When we hit the high-flow button on the 873H the concrete comes out as fast as we want it to,” he says. “Because we didn’t have to move chutes around, we saved about 12-15 minutes per truckload pouring that greenhouse job. On home basements, we save about 20-25 minutes a job.” What’s more, he and his crew don’t stand around waiting for a rented trailer pump to show up. Easy to use. Nelson can attach his Bobcat loader to either side of the concrete pump and position the unit where he wants it. Then it’s simply a matter of connecting the hoses and feeding the concrete mix into the hopper and pump. With the Bobcat Remote Attachment Control—which allows the operator to start and stop the loader and engage the auxiliaries from outside the loader—operating the pump is a one-person job. He and his crews learned to use the concrete pump by watching a Bobcat training video. “We had no problems operating the unit from the start,” he says. They use the attachment with three 25-ft.-long sections of 3-in.-diameter hose and, if a longer reach is needed, 10-ft.-long sections of 3-in. steel pipe. “The hose is a lot lighter and easier to use than the 4-in. hose that comes with the trailer pumps,” Nelson says. “Also, the crews don’t have to continually drag heavy steel chutes around in basements. With the concrete pump we can just keep moving the hose back and forth for more efficient pouring.” Easy access. Depending on length and diameter of hose, concrete conditions and Bobcat loader model, this attachment can pump concrete as far as 250 ft. horizontally or up to two stories vertically. That, plus the ability to route the hose through small openings, under decks, around shrubs, trees and buildings and over rough terrain, allows the crew to reach areas off limits to trucks, wheelbarrows and mud buggies. Top quality concrete. Nelson pumps the same type of concrete and lubricant with his Bobcat attachment as with a trailer pump—3/4-in. aggregate and six bags of Portland cement. “We’ve pumped 200 ft. so far without any problems and haven’t had any plugging,” he says. “We can maintain a better slump because we don’t have to add water to get concrete to come down the chutes in a basement. The concrete isn’t as wet when we pour it with the concrete pump and the finishers don’t have to wait so long for the concrete to set up. We also get a better quality finish.” More convenience. Nelson likes the scheduling flexibility offered by having his own concrete pump. “I don’t have to arrange for a trailer pump in advance or pay a minimum charge to reserve it,” he says. “I decide when to pour because I control the schedule.” Easy transport is another big convenience. Nelson hauls the concrete pump on a trailer equipped with a 150-gal. water tank and a transfer pump for clean up. Once a job is finished it takes about 20 minutes to clean the pump and load it on the trailer. Also, the readymix truck is back on the road sooner because there are no chutes to clean. “The Bobcat concrete pump makes our job a lot easier and allows us to be much more efficient,” says Nelson. “I’m extremely happy with the way it works.”