what happens to leftover concrete?

If the concrete is for a house being built then often times the truck dumps the excess at the building site. At least that's what happens here on Whidbey Island. I had to bury a bunch of concrete. And I know plenty of folks who have done likewise. A pain in the ass. Eric

I remember quite clearly, sometime in the 70's my brother was working a large construction site in the MPLS area. They had about 30 trucks inbound with concrete, and there was some thing that went wrong with the forms, or something...

They very quickly pushed a big hole open, and dropped all 30 truckloads into it, and covered it up. It was only a few years ago, some 40 years later, when new building construction was started, that they "found" this enourmous monument under a former parking lot.. It delayed the new buildign construction by a Long time... No one seemed to know anything about this HUGE mass of of underground concrete. Major expense! to bust it all out... No one left to admit where it came from, or why it was there.

Anybody from the MPLS area have heard of this in the last few years?

There are two things they'll do with it. If you let them, they will dump any excess on your property where you want. I have 20 acres, and lots of places with low spots or potholes that need filling, so it's a benefit to me to have them put it there.

The other thing they do is transport the remainder to a "washout" site. Companies will pay to have the trucks come rinse out their barrels in a pit. That leftover is mixed with a little dirt, and over-wet, then stirred frequently enough to prevent its becoming a solid block. People then pay to have "washout" delivered as roadbase material and fill under new slabs. It's a superior base, that eventually hardens to about

2000psi soil-cement concrete.

With most ready-mix companies, the drivers _have_ to wash down before they go on the road -- they're required to, to maintain the equipment. So whether or not they dump the excess, they still need a place to wash the chute and the face of the auger.

It's only a little bit of a mess, but you have to put up with that.

LLoyd

Ever see those 2' x 2' x 6' stackable concrete blocks for retaining walls for gravel etc. The concrete companies here (southern Indiana-Kentucky area) have forms that make those and all trucks come back to the concrete plant and pour what they have into the mold. They are not perfect due to different mixes etc. but they are strong and weigh about 4000# in full size. Sometimes they make a partial block. Also if you live or work near a concrete plant they may give you the left over concrete. We poured our parking lot where I work this way, a little at a time. You always have to have forms prebuilt and adjustable. Sometimes we were all out on service calls and the office help had to pour it. :-) You will get different grades of concrete but hey........it's cheap. One other thing, you never know when they are coming. You never get more than 5 minutes warning. We let many a lunch get cold to accomplish this. Lyndell

Around here every cement truck driver has a brother in law who has a driveway formed up on the sides only. Left over cement is dumped off at BILs trailer house on the way back to the plant. Also looks like to stop this practice the plants load every load short about 1/2 yard but in reality it forces a truck to go back for another load, at the customer's expense

I blacktopped the parking lot one place I worked with leftover asphalt. One of our customers owned a fleet of asphalt trucks, and part of the local plant. Some days they had a full truckloas left in the machine and needed a place to dump it. We had to go rent a power roller, but we saved about $5,000 and eliminated the mess from the existing old dusty slag that was hauled from the steel mill. The business owner was furious that we spent $75 to pave the lot. ;-)

My dad had a concrete company next door to him some years ago. They had 20 or so acres of land that slopped towards a small river. The trucks would beat it back and dump some water in quick. The tank was always turning - mixing the mix. The small amount of water with the truck would delay for a time. They would then head for the parking lot where the trucks parked. They slowly dumped the end of each load into the lot and wash out in another area. Park on the other side. Over several years they worked side to side and the rough looking - think traction - parking lot expanded down the hill. They then started double stacking it - as some areas were light or broke up.

It was only good for them, no one wanted to buy the land under them and kick them out. Even the beavers in the river built a dam and didn't phase them.

Mart> I was watching a concrete delivery yesterday and got to wondering -

It's very difficult to phase beavers. ;-)

A lot of auto wrecking yards and other industrial sites have paved their lots with leftover truckloads of concrete like that - you could do the same thing on a farm with paving the access roads. Just put out the word to the concrete yard that you want some, and have some of your workers ready to drop what they're doing and place and finish it as needed.

If it's for a parking area or a farm road you only need to make temporary forms to hold it till it sets up, screed it off level and give it a rudimentary float and jitterbug job to get the aggregate down.

Though it would look a lot better if you had a Power Trowel to hit it with some hard-troweled finishing after it has an hour or two to set up, and/or a brush finish if it's on any sort of slope. And give it a quick coat of curing sealer with a garden sprayer.

Oh, and a bunch of traffic cones so nobody drives on the new slab till it's had a day or two to cure.

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"Michael A. Terrell" on Sat, 18 Feb 2012

16:08:36 -0500 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Now that's a cheap bastard. B-)

He still had junk he bought when he got out of the Navy sitting in the way in the shop, along with several hundred 30 year old B&W TVs that were never picked up after they were repaired. He got mad one day when we complained about the lack of room to work and cut an early photo machine in half, and dragged it through a window. It didn't matter that the supplies for the tintype photo process hadn't been available for decades, he thought it was valuable.

He got even madder when we hit a slow week and painted the inside of the storefront. He didn't speak to us until the end of the month, when he realized that sales were up 30%. The business had been there over 30 years, and had never been painted. He had used 1/2" plywood for the interior walls, and they were gray with dirt from the parking lot. We tiled the plywood floor, changed the layout in the front and re arranged all the inventory to make it easier & faster to do our work. His son donated all those TVs to a vocational school, and it looked like a different place. Business more than doubled, for an investment of under $1,000. :)

Form up some simple, small thing off to the side someplace - patio blocks, pavers, fenceposts (you'll need refinforcing to make those work, normally) landscape blocks ... all the way down to bricks, and make some good out of it. You might even be able to make a small side business out of having the forms, and being willing to come set them up near whoever is getting concrete poured, so they (or you) get some useful thing from the excess, rather than a lump of crap to bury.

Yeah, they keep chewing on the phasing sticks, that's why we started using fiberglass. jk

Boy, there sure is a lot of misinformation available here.

There are many variables in the concrete business. It is not unusual to have a cubic yard or more of leftover concrete in the truck after the pour. The driver has a huge obligation to clean all chutes, hopper, and any splatter on the rear of the truck before he goes back on the street

- this has more to do with broken windshields and law suits. He dumps whatever water he has left into the drum with the left over concrete if there is any chance of it setting up before he gets back to the yard. If it happens to be a yard that casts the big blocks, they will use up the concrete making them if there is time. These blocks are 2' x 2' x

4' with tongue and groove surfaces so they can be stacked with a piece of heavy wire rope cast in the top for a lifting eye. These blocks take 16 CF (about .6 of CY) and weigh between 2000 and 2500 #. When a yard is really busy there is often not time to deal with these and not all yards even make them. The driver empties the truck in a designated area of their yard. The EPA requires that they hold the runoff water. The left overs are junk that is not usable for anything in the concrete business. It is usually referred to as "wash out". If you have a parking lot or some other use for the material, they will usually sell it far cheaper than you can even buy #57 stone. You will need your own dump truck and make an arrangement with the yard to load.

We have sometimes received concrete so fresh we could have finished it. There is no or very little picking and choosing. Whatever the loader scoops up is what you get. It may have hardened lumps, etc. It is all material that breaks fairly easy under track equipment, usually even a backhoe. It makes a fantastic fill material and even finish road or parking surface. Even though the cement has turned hard, it will sort of re powder under the machines and the stuff gets really hard after some rain and grading. It is not homogenous concrete, but it is a dense and solid surface.

Good call. With the higher dielectric constant, they phase-cancel and disappear.

--Winston

First you have to sort them by frequency, then work on phasing them. ;-)

SAVE THE BEAVERS FROM PHASE-CANCELLING!

or my fave,

Save a tree. Eat a beaver!

-- The ultimate result of shielding men from folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer

"Michael A. Terrell" on Sun, 19 Feb 2012

05:06:26 -0500 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

That's not "frugal" that is "stingy".

He would wear a 20+ year old 'Monkey-Warts' jacket when we had a sound job outdoors rather than spend $5 on something newer and more appropriate.