Ok whats the deal with booms pumping with 3” and 2 ½” hose? I even hear of a company using a 52 meter for shotcrete.

So if your using a boom for small line jobs what preparation do you take to insure the safety of yourself and those around you?

Some of the things I have heard about are using a small screen over your hopper to keep larger material out of your hopper. Is this something you all do or is this one of the things that is outside the realm of training? Is there any training info on this?

3" is pretty standard in many parts of the country

I always used a screen with the (diamond shaped holes in it) like what you may find on some grills, tie strap it on, prime with grout but watch your pressure ghauge.

Where does it stand that you not can use a 2.5" or 3" endhose ?

You should use the proper dimension of the hose that the pour needs , it says so in our Swedish manual....

If it is about 4" between the rebars in a wall then you use a 3" endhose (about 4" external dimension)... You are allowed to drop the mud up to 40" in Sweden , so you must have the hose down the wallform...

I have welded some more bars on the grate to minimize that something "big" come through and cause some blockage....

And I have one finer grate I use when I run with 2" hose...

And one more thing ! Our customers dont want to drag a 4" hose ! Thats the biggest reason that we run with 3" or 2,5" hose , when We use a system .

A crew that are used to work with 3" and get a "taste" of 2.5" dont want to go back to 3" hose !

Ha! Todd you think thats bad, a few weeks ago I was watching a 32 putz  pumping 3/8" with  2" hose  7 feet of reducers up 4 stories  with his a standard screen and out 300 feet. lucky for them an accident did not happen. Dam lucky!!!!!

Ha! Todd you think thats bad, a few weeks ago I was watching a 32 putz  pumping 3/8" with  2" hose  7 feet of reducers up 4 stories  with a standard screen and out 300 feet. lucky for them an accident did not happen. Dam lucky!!!!!

shotcrete? you're out of your mind.
but, i've pumped through 200' of two inch with a 42m putz. you have to make sure you have a nice slurry to prime all of the system. then you turn your volume all the way down, throttle at the minimum and slowly build volume back up until your rams are barely moving. the way to know this is to look into the water box to see your cylinders activate.
i've done it with and without screens. sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. either way you're pumping so slow that plugs won't push through.

Vasa: Whoever does your grates is an ARTIST

Yes that is called grate art.

65m, 16th floor pool and the customer wanted to use 2.5 and air nozzle for shotcrete.  when i pulled up on site in downtown atlanta i noticed a huge pile of hard shotcrete mix.  called my boss after talking to the laborers about what happened the day before and i said at first "no way".  my boss called the forman and then called the redi-mix and made up a 100% natural sand mix and i pumped through 3" an no nozzle and they slung it on the walls.  Took about an hour and a half and i brought it down an suck 2 balls.  Still held my breath and almost plugged on the prime next pour.   build-up while using big pumps and small lines makes for a dangerous situation.

65m Petee

Man, you said it.

Unless they have a pile of 57 stone to recirculate with after the pour. STILL, it is scary.

hey you need to some bar stock on the bottom of that rack because the truck chute will flex it eazy so you end up having to bend it back flat.

Todd pretty common occurence up here in the Northwest and even in No CA I did 14 straight days up in the sierra nevadas for PG & E shotcreting their water flumes 36m Schwing 600ft of 3 inch pipe and 75ft of 2 inch hose. In those 14days I had 206hrs on the time clock

has anyone ever pumped v-ditch? i have done 600' of 2 1/2"hose off the end of the boom 32m and moved 3 times a day

dave u back at work now? pumpco misses you.

                          Hi Eugene !

If it´s My grate you refer to so is the extra bars lowered in the original grate so no chute can´t catch a bar and bend the grate.... It was not finished when I took the pic .

And by the way our welder is a very good welder so he made grate from schratch too , but this time we buy a new grate and did an improvment , lack of time this time...

I never had a prob with running small line off of a boom. Just at the end of the pour suck your ball back clean out then run a pig thru with a hopper or 2 of water no probs. Just make sure you have no build up in your s tube or rock.

we always unhook the small line either order 1 yard of reg rock concrete or if there is limestone or gravel on the job shovel  you some in and recirculate balls to the wall it always cleans the s tube or rock valve pumped 2 1/2 days straight through 3" on a slipform had some 57 and added it to the mix cleaned her up no problem