Way to mix concrete without a cement mixer

I recently poured a 3ft x 6 ft slab. I mixed 3 or 4 batches in a wheel barrel and dumped them into the form. On the last batch I didn't need to much so I only used 1/2 of a bag. I had trouble in the area of that last pour. I could not get it to float, I had stones at the surface where I made the last dump. It could have been me, but I have done several jobs and am especially proud of the last ramp I made, no stones, I broomed the surface, and use it daily, looks great. When you mentioned mixing the "dry ingredients fairly well" It added to my thought that maybe the 1/2 bag was more stone than cement and that's why I couldn't get it to float. Anyway, next time I will throw away a 1/2 bag of concrete I added water to, instead of a 1/2 bag that hardened in the bag :-)

Mikek

Use a shovel, it works great and it a great exercise.

Just go to Harbor Freight and buy a cheap mixer. When done, scrap the metal and keep the motor. Some of those last if kept painted on the outsides.

Consider if not a cheap mixer, then a 1/2 bag roll-a-round plastic bottle that has fins in side...

Martin

I wish I had a hill with all down slopes... Never have to carry it up to roll down to mix.

I think after a while this could be a bear and maybe a bad back pushing it around.

Martin

te with Portland cement, gravel, sand, and of course water. I need a fair a mount of concrete but not all at one time. I don't have a cement mixer and it would be a pain to rent one every time because I cant do all these proje cts in one day or even a weekend. I am wanting to pur a footer along my dri veway to make a brick boarder, and I also have some concrete edging I want to make.

d be relatively in expensive?

Is it possible to mix say 1/4 a yard of concrete that way at a time? Maybe using a 4x8 plywood sheet and 2x6's for the sides making a box to mix every thing?

A plywood sheet with 2 x 4s to frame it is a very common kind of homemade mortar box. The last couple of jobs I did used that setup, with a shee of plywood that was 4 feet square.

Whatever you use, get it down low enough that you can work it with a hoe and/or shovel (I use both, alternately) without reaching up to get at the mix.

I hoe the ingredients together; flip the pile over with a shovel; and then hoe again. Once everything is mixed dry, further hoeing will only tend to separate it.

I add water slowly, working it with both hoe and shovel, making sure it's absorbed all of the water before adding more. When it's 100% mixed, with no dry cement or aggregate visible, you're done. Adding more water at this point with only make for weak concrete.

And it is a lot easier to do it in a 4X4 square 6 inches deep than a

That seems like a pretty big batch to me. 1/4 yd is about 7 cu ft and that would weigh 1000 lb. I'd start MUCH smaller, to get the feel of it, before trying to do 1/4 yd.

Bob

standard strength is about 3300 lbs per yard - so about 820 lbs. But yes - it IS a pretty good sized batch - about 8 feet of 40" sidewalk

We used the mixer for that job - and I shovelled all the gravel twice

- once out of the pit into the trailer, and once into the mixer. The next summer it was the hog stable floor and about 1500 square feet of manure yard. The summer I turned 14 I knocked out all the box stalls with a sledge hammer and the gutters in the dairy stable, then mixed the concrete and filled the cribbing the boss hab built. The next summer it was the manure yard and the hog stable floor, and replacing half a dozen or more beams under the hay-loft - over the stable (big old bank barn - about 100 years old) with 12" square elm-about 14 feet long IIRC. (Dutch elm disease was killing all the big elms in the woodlot - and we had some BIG ones) Winter weekends were spent cutting the limbwood with the 40" circular saw belted to the old 44 Massey and splitting it with an axe. Gotta be well below freezing to split rock elm or the axe either bounces or sticks.!!!

Martin Eastburn on Thu, 11 Sep 2014

Mix it in the wheelbarrow. Use a rake or hoe.

There are, I think, flexible plastic 'barrels' which are meant to be used to mix small batches of concrete in places where a powered mixer is not an option.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

I had the same problem, plus no truck. I figured out how to use a Trash Can to mix 90 bags of concrete in three different pours. I hope this video helps other folks in my situation.