Armcon volumetric mixers. franchise

I saw these volumetric mixers a lot when I was in London , I’ve not seen one down my neck of the woods , I was wondering if anybody has had any experience of the company Armcon who are behind it & offer a business set up with truck etc , im wondering if this could work down my way or if the reason there isn’t any is due to set up & operating costs …

armconcementech.com/lev1/pag … s-opps.php

I was thinking the same thing the other day for Cornwall i had a chat with a couple of builders i know and they reckoned they wouldnt use them they just turn up at the concrete plant and get it on the back of a transit.
i guess the reason they work in london is they can go out and do two or three smaller jobs without returning to a plant and the distances between jobs isnt that great compared to distances in the country.

cornishnick:
I was thinking the same thing the other day for Cornwall i had a chat with a couple of builders i know and they reckoned they wouldnt use them they just turn up at the concrete plant and get it on the back of a transit.
i guess the reason they work in london is they can go out and do two or three smaller jobs without returning to a plant and the distances between jobs isnt that great compared to distances in the country.

It’s the same here, I’ve spoken to lots of builders who said they would use it , doing builders merchants work recently I could see for myself many jobs that would benefit from it & guys on sight would like the option, I guess you would have to work out cheaper than buying bulk bags of sand & cement & mixing it themselves onsite & like you say journey distance could be an issue with getting many jobs in a day but then in London there is a lot of traffic to deal with…& a higher number of small jobs but would the initial outlay prove to be to much against the returns

I suppose it depends on if you can work something out with a local company about storage, use of cement/agg etc the other thing that was pointed out to me is the places that dont have them probably dont have them for a reason :slight_smile:
I dont know where you are but i livedin Cornwall for thirty years and dont ever remember seeing one and i cant believe that no-one down there has thought about it or costed it out

I live in pembrokeshire & have never seen one down here, plenty of concrete mixers about , I guess if it was viable one those guys would have one …

go for one of these mixwiththebest.com/reimereng … /index.php
use a chassis with a high design weight ,renault is 42/44 ton ,donkey engine . if you can get on with local utility’s doing trench fill with recycled material
we near enough keep one busy all week ,do not touch bay lynx with a barge pole though :unamused:

d4c24a:
go for one of these mixwiththebest.com/reimereng … /index.php
use a chassis with a high design weight ,renault is 42/44 ton ,donkey engine . if you can get on with local utility’s doing trench fill with recycled material
we near enough keep one busy all week ,do not touch bay lynx with a barge pole though :unamused:

When you say we, who is we ? Are you a company that does this work or a one man operation? What area are you in ? Did you purchase the vehicle & equipment outright or lease or franchise ? What are cost & income like ? Pm if you wish , thanks ,

The Renault seems popular. No o licence needed and road tax is dirt cheap. Think you can’t use red derv though :frowning:

kr79:
The Renault seems popular. No o licence needed and road tax is dirt cheap. Think you can’t use red derv though :frowning:

Why no O licence required , surely one would be required from running the truck ? …

kemaro:

kr79:
The Renault seems popular. No o licence needed and road tax is dirt cheap. Think you can’t use red derv though :frowning:

Why no O licence required , surely one would be required from running the truck ? …

Classed as “mobile plant”. :wink:

Question been asked before on O/D forum see here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=101438&p=1507050&hilit=Volumetric+mixers#p1507050

Big Truck:

kemaro:

kr79:
The Renault seems popular. No o licence needed and road tax is dirt cheap. Think you can’t use red derv though :frowning:

Why no O licence required , surely one would be required from running the truck ? …

Classed as “mobile plant”. :wink:

Question been asked before on O/D forum see here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=101438&p=1507050&hilit=Volumetric+mixers#p1507050

Interesting read, so theoretically I could get one & start working it straight away , until they change the law at least , this idea is sounding more interesting, I could keep it on my brother in laws farm & have storage for the raw materials & use of the manitou for loading ! Hmmm …

kemaro:

d4c24a:
go for one of these mixwiththebest.com/reimereng … /index.php
use a chassis with a high design weight ,renault is 42/44 ton ,donkey engine . if you can get on with local utility’s doing trench fill with recycled material
we near enough keep one busy all week ,do not touch bay lynx with a barge pole though :unamused:

When you say we, who is we ? Are you a company that does this work or a one man operation? What area are you in ? Did you purchase the vehicle & equipment outright or lease or franchise ? What are cost & income like ? Pm if you wish , thanks ,

i work for a large national contractor installing new watermains ,many of the jobs are trench fill foam mix using recycled aggregate
just to give you an idea we have just finished a job 1500 metres long 500mm wide and average 900mm deep all foam concrete ,job before that was 2500 metres ,job we are on now is 1500 metres at 350mm wide

we use this company service is faultless
dropbox.com/s/8gvx8oo37sivh … %20004.JPG
cement hopper has enough for two foam mix,s so a grab brings a load of material as well ,reloads then takes muck away :slight_smile:
roughly about 16 cube per load

kr79:
The Renault seems popular. No o licence needed and road tax is dirt cheap. Think you can’t use red derv though :frowning:

it has one of the highest design weights :slight_smile:

Sir Peter Hendy of TfL was railing against these the other week, and how some of the vehicles they had picked out on spot checks were alarmingly overloaded and undermaintained. Being the GLA they might look at controls like the LEZ and ‘licences’ to operate non compliant vehicles, being applied to other conditions.

Many years ago I had a concrete pump on site, the driver was seriously disoriented, managed to put the thing in a trench (we jacked it out with the stabiliser rams) and then he narrowly missed demolishing cars and walls as he headed off. Never found out whether the Police pulled him - he’d apparently done a night shift and then come along via another job to our site. Now I’d certainly be making sure the the details were tweeted and with the Police, and an expectation of a result.

I have to agree that most VMs I’ve seen look like they’re going to fall over on the next roundabout. Most look like the A Team were locked in the workshop with it when it was built.

The reason you don’t see a lot of them out in the country is because people are afraid of change. They work very well and the modern ones will keep pace with a traditional drum mixer.
If you do look at setting up, you will need to make sure an artic cement tanker can get to your yard. My old boss said it was the same cost for a 20t load of cement as it was for 30t.
Where are you based in the country?

these things are only good for the crap jobs if you like, trench fill, the diy,er ect, the major projects and builders have the concrete specified, which mix, cement content, additives ect… majority of batch plants will batch a mix to british standard and will hold records of this… as far as i,m aware a volumetric will not do this, in effect the concrete produced does not pass british standards, though i do stand to be corrected if there is an operator on here…

When I loaded them in the past, they had ordinary 20mm or 10mm washed ballast on so apart from the amount of water and cement added, the concrete produced is bog standard. As a previous poster said they only seem to appear on basic groundwork jobs, as batch plants add in fibrin/waterproofing additives, and various ratios of sand and stone.
Clancy Docwra have a volumetric mixer at Kidlington that produces a trenchfill material using screened/crushed ■■■■■■■■ mixed with cement dust. This is batched on site or in their recycling yard and loaded onto their grab wagons. I watched in use last week as used to remove all the muck from their yard.

Have just finished working for a firm that uses these…they are now quality controlled (QSRMC or the like) and calibrated every 3 months. They can mix any design mix up to and including ST5 . Lots of building sites around Northamptonshire are using them for kerbing,footings,oversite and structural.They carry their own supply of additives and fibres.Some are now producing screed. A lot does depend on the operator to ensure the setting are correct. The company i worked for had 8 of these and we were kept busy all day 5 1/2 days a week plus on average 3 nights a week.One of the reasons i gave up my barrel mixer was because they were taking so much work off the big boys (Tarmac,Hanson etc) work was in short supply.I feel they will soon be investigated more due to the fact they are classed as plant which should mean they arrive at a site and use the material on site to mix concrete rather than hauling the materials to site…a grey area.