Masonry Magazine May 2003 Page. 26
GROUTING EQUIPMENT
Mixing by hand requires laborers shoveling sand and pea gravel, if required, and lifting bags of Portland cement to get the materials into the mixer.
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cubic foot, adjustable-height mixer. It is also ergonomically designed so laborers can load materials at a low height and still dump directly into a high mud pan or Grout Hog. (Editorial disclaimer: co-author and mason contractor Damian Lang also owns EZ Grout Corp.)
After you've considered what mixer to use to mix the grout, now it's time to decide how to load the mixer. When mixing grout on site there are two options to get materials into the mixers: mix by hand or use a silo system, such as the Spec Mix system.
Mixing by hand requires laborers shoveling sand and pea gravel, if required, and lifting bags of Portland cement to get the materials into the mixer. With the cost of today's labor force, mixing by hand is usually not economical, especially if your mixer has a small capacity.
If there is a company such as Spec Mix in your area that can supply premixed grout and a silo system, mixing grout can be done much quicker with a fraction of the effort. Although there is an extra cost to getting the premixed grout, that extra cost is minimal compared to the cost of extra labor spent shoveling and lifting. In a high production grout project, two men mixing grout on site have a difficult time keeping up with the process without these silo systems.
"We use 3,000 pound bulk bags to deliver the mix," Stan Harwell, Eastern regional manager for Spec Mix, says. "We'll set a silo out on a job site, and if they're using a Grout Hog, we have some extension legs that will go on the bottom of the silo to facilitate using the Grout Hog. That means you can get your mixer so the Grout Hog will fit underneath it. The contractor will take these 3,000 pound bags and fill that silo up with the dry product using a forklift to lift the bags."
The Spec Mix silo is actually just a holding hopper because the dry mix components are prepared in a factory off site. "We computerize batch all dry products, sand, cement and aggregate if it's a coarse grout," explains Harwell. "There are two types of grout; fine grout and coarse grout. Fine grout is just concrete, sand and Portland cement. Coarse grout is typically 3/8-inch maximum size aggregate rock blended with concrete, sand and the cement.
"With a 10- to 11-inch slump grout mix," continues Harwell, "they'd take our dry material in the hopper and, depending on whether they are using coarse or fine grout, 24 Masonry May 2003 www.masoncontractors.com