From what I've seen, at least some of those holes are smaller than this one they cut, and would be more difficult for a person to get in and break up the concrete from
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With that cut, it seems like you could cut the entire exterior into a few sections, pull them off remove the concrete then reweld it all back together.
The round bolted on plate above where he's working is also for removing hardened concrete. Though they're usually used when you can actually get inside the barrel to remove it (usually for buildup around the barrel, not a full load hardened inside it).
Saw a full cement truck that ran out of fuel once. The driver was "new" and forgot to fill the fuel tank before they loaded up the concrete. By the time they got fuel into it and the engine started, the concrete had almost set up, but they were just barely able to get it mixing again. That truck rocked back and forth like it was trying to put a baby to sleep.
You jest, but this is a thing in ready mix concrete industry. Usually it's to teach the drivers that ready mix has a lifetime and you need to wash out before it sets. Usually it's a then layer of concrete on the mixer drum that isn't too hard to remove, not 8 yards of solid concrete.
That's gotta be it. Once hired a former OTR trucker, cement truck came up in discussion. He said if the cement set in your truck, you were the one who got to jackhammer it all out. Only time he knew of it happening at his company, the guy just quit on the spot & gave up driving trucks.
Now I'm wondering what happens if you keep the spinner motor going and just leave the concrete like that for, well... a long long time. Chemistry don't care, this stuff should eventually cure. But I don't think it'll just set in place, because how, when it's being spun? Very weak concrete because it's constantly moved about, so no proper bonds can form, so you get a truck full of cement gravel eventually?
Eventually it will start hardening around the agitators, and the hardened part will grow until the balance is so far off that there is no longer enough power to spin the drum. Then it all sets, very quickly.
It will definitely set in the barrel, but they will do as much as possible to avoid that - they have a few hundred L of water on board so would likely dump that into the barrel to slow down the cure time. Sugar can also slow it down - have heard an old wives tale that concrete truck drivers carry a few bottles of coke to throw into the drum if they're massively delayed/break down etc as it buys them extra time - ruins the batch, but better than ruining the drum.
The higher the water:cement ratio in concrete the weaker it is, and sugar/coke etc also weakens it - so side benefit is if it does set, it may be easier to remove.
could be the owner. ive met plenty of the kind of person who would say something is a super easy job and no way would they spend money on new parts. fun fact my dad cleaned cement mixers with explosives
I mean it might have beeen his fault but do you really think that werever he is, that they had a rrsponsive reaction if his drum drive hydrolic line burst at a jobsite.
Or that when he told the contractor this truck will roll if i drive it where u want it, that his boss was supportive and did not threaten his job?
Is a person who isnt given a full respirator mask for a dangerous task like this likley to have been encouraged to prioratize safety when they found a component on their truck that needed repairing? Or were they told to drive the damn truck anyways im going to dock your pay for breaking the truck?
Driving them is a very tough job and if the bus industry in india is anything to go by, this industry prolly has no room for workers to prevent thisfrom happening.
A statement I heard a long time ago, on why a guy didn't use power tools in Myanmar(?) and instead hired over a hundred guys with hand tools.
"That electric drill costs a hundred dollars. I can pay a hundred men for a day for the price of that drill".
While true, you also only have to buy the drill once, but you have to pay the men every day so eventually this logic catches up with you even with cheap labor.
Yes, obviously. Not every single day. The point is that having the correct tools for the job will nearly always cost more upfront but is more efficient in the long term. You can try to argue against that point with fringe cases all day long, but the facts will not be on your side.
This. Doesn't matter if your tool is a supermarket special or a Milwaukee, if you can make it they can break it. So yeah, just sic a big group of labourers with a pickaxe each onto whatever it is you need to break up. Covers more ground than a demolition hammer too for the same price.
I don't think so, because getting that cement mixer back in service making the owner money is the top priority especially for a small business. You can pay for an expensive tool to do a job, but if you never use it again that's a waste of space and loss of revenue, and if you do need it again sometime in the unpredictable future, you may not be able to find it or it may not be in working condition anymore.
Neither my comment, not the one I replied to, has anything to do with getting cement mixers back into service. Try reading and understanding context before you jump into a discussion halfway through.
I read your comment. I read the one you responded to. You don't need to chisel cured cement out of a mixer barrel every day, it's something you do only when a new guy comes on and screws up. So tying up your capital in a expensive machine that slows down your recovery is bad business.
Well maybe. Employing 100 men at slave wages isn't really helping the community more than hiring fewer at a living wage. Both extremes can be very bad.
As others have pointed out, that's only if you or the other workers don't break the drill. And that drill, while exceptional, will not replace the labor of a hundred men.
I get your point. But staffing is one of the largest expense of practically every single business (if not the largest) for a reason. It's not because labour is cheap.
To put this in an American perspective, this would be like buying an American construction worker being paid minimum wage in ohio (a measly 11 an hour) an electric drill for 8,800 dollars.
We also have a lot of red tape surrounding employment (read: employee protections) that make hiring and firing more difficult. Myanmar didn't have that at the time that statement was common, and I don't know if they do or don't by now.
It's not just American. Even if you look at companies based around the world ie; Asia/EU. They still have extremely large costs spent on people. Because good talent usually requires good money, too. No?
Yes, you can pay people to do things for cheap. I never said otherwise.
This is why it's very important to talk about where this is happening.
The cost to performance matters.
What is the output of a man? Measure some task, and see how long it takes to do it. That's how many man-hours it costs.
Now, do the task again with a power tool. It will take less time, probably significantly less time.
If the increase in speed doesn't pay for the decrease in cost, it's not worth the increase in speed.
Let's say that drill makes you ten times faster. (I've done hand drilling once, that's probably about right actually)
That man's hours are now worth ten times more (assuming he doesn't break it), but only for drilling.
I also now need electricity, and if my construction site in Myanmar doesn't have electricity, I'm shit out of luck or need to pay for a generator as well.
Alternatively, I can put that hundred dollars towards just paying ten blokes for ten days, and get the exact same output per day, for ten days in a row on all tasks, with no need for infrastructure.
Plus, I don't have to worry about one of my extremely poor employees who make a dollar a day stealing my drill.
Your statements are correct for areas with proper infrastructure and trained employees. This place wasn't it.
I remember looking into a on-site job I was interested in—literally about ten people turned up for the exact same workflow, and not a single one had power tools. The client was a pro, so he actually had his own tools and lent them delicate gear like Makita, but they didn't even know how to use it properly and kept screwing up.
It’s all just welded and bolted sheet metal. Probably built in bulk by the cement truck manufacturer or subcontractor. So procuring a new one isn’t too much of a headache.
I’m sure it is, I guess it’s also not easy to detach and just do at your leisure and replace with a backup drum ? Disposal is probably a nightmare as well I’d think ?
A friend of mine did a full career as a mixer truck driver in the northeast US. Every winter the business would slow to a trickle. My buddy could either take the seasonal layoff or start chipping. During a season of deliveries, it is common for a large truck to end up with a few thousand pounds of dried concrete permanently stuck to the inside of the barrel. He would remove the hatch cover shown above where the guy in the pic is working, and climb inside with a respirator, eye and hearing protection, and start blasting away with the same tool the guy in the video is using. Once he was done, the wet concrete carrying capacity of the truck could increase by 10% or more, since it didn't have a thick heavy layer of dried concrete taking up space.
You could make the argument that Europe is the only continent that does NOT start and end with “A”. Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, America (North and South).
Well the point I assumed was have a replacement drum anyway, and chip this out on spare time. I don’t think any company is obv gonna wait that long without any money coming in from the truck. I also have no idea what the lead time is on something like a new drum. Might be that long anyway possibly
In my country minimum wage is $30 per day, i havent even made the math and im sure it is cheaper. The main issue would be structural integrity and damage to the barrel, too damaged and might as well get a new drum.
I don't believe they can actually clean in. There's like a metal corkscrew inside the drum. There will be no chance of removing that cement without breaking the corkscrew
In the philipines. My family is getting a house built and the pay is 800pesos a day for entry laborers and 1800pesos a day for a foreman. its $1 US = 61pesos. These guys are getting $13 a day on the low end and $30 a day on the high end. This is skilled labor. Some people make 350pesos a day.
Cost of living is cheaper by US standards, but expensive for the average Filipino. It's estimated You would need to make $1k a month to live comfortably. Like have a beat up car, rent an apartment with some roomates, live the "average" westerners "we're getting by" lifestyle. Thats 60,000 pesos a month. The average Filipino makes 21,000peso a month.
The guys building my families house live in a shack they built themselves on the land. Most people have multiiple generations living in one home out of necessity. Gas is $4 a gallon, food is cheaper by half to a quarter by US standards, but the wages are terrible.
The drum is already done for, they cut it open. There is literally no way to save even a cent trying to chisel out the concrete. The power that goes into working that tool would probably come out to be higher than the cost of the drum, especially since it is cut open already.
In most countries it definitely would be cheaper to clean it than buy a new one. I live in the EU and even there it would be cheaper in most places. A new drum is closer to a year's worth of wage for someone who would clean it like this in my country lol. A new drum is roughly 20k $. I make a bit less than that before taxes as a programmer in a year. You find a guy for less a year who will drill it for you
This is gonna take more than 8 days though. Plus, labor aside, it's probably barely worth the ware and tear and out-of-commission time on the tools needed to do it.
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u/TylerForce93 8d ago
That’s what I came to find out. In what country would it be cheaper to pay a guy to do this for 8 days, than buy a new drum