We had to pour a concrete step at the front of a house, and the transit-mix truck couldn’t get anywhere near the site. So we used a method for mixing concrete that I learned about from a carpenter named Pat McMahill. We folded a 12-ft. by 6-ft. piece of 4-mil plastic into a 6-ft. square. Then, with two men holding the corners of the plastic, a third guy dumped the contents of a sack of ready-mix concrete into the center of the plastic, along with a premeasured amount of water. The guys on the plastic sheet then lifted each corner in succession, and after about a minute or so the concrete was ready to place by simply pouring it out of its plastic nest.
Fortified by a steady diet of rock and roll, we had some 90 sacks poured in less than two hours. While I don’t recommend doing flatwork this way, small jobs such as porch and deck footings are a real breeze.
Dave Marshall, Sterling, VA
Edited and Illustrated by Charles Miller
From Fine Homebuilding #100
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"Fortified by a steady diet of rock and roll,"
Haha! Love it.
That will definitely give you some extra energy and help keep a rhythm going.
I'm also a drummer and I often have to turn the music off when I'm working because it can get dangerous. I have a natural compulsion to do a task to the rhythm of the music. So if I'm swinging a hammer and the music is too fast... well, that's how thumbnails get hit. :-)
How about a photo of one of these beach blanket mixed steps after a few winters of freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw? One minute of flopping the mix around on a plastic beach blanket – doesn’t sound like a good way to insure a good mix of water and dry stuff. How was the concrete vibrated? By tapping on the forms a few times with a hammer? And there are three people working on what some 1-man contractors would do alone. Why not mix in a PVC mortar mixing tub ($5.75 at Home Depot)? 90 sacks of Quikrete means over a cubic yard – for that quantity it might even pay to roll a drum mixer up to the house. This beach blanket “method” looks like one of those shoestring contractor methods that I wouldn’t let anyone palm off on me. Another unedited “tip” from FHB.