Concrete Batching Plants For Onsite Construction Projects

Construction project or site professionals have many responsibilities for running and managing a building site including budget control as well as delivery and storage of equipment and materials. Today, concrete equipment is advancing in a way that offers construction project managers a greater ability to adhere to tight budget controls and delivery of materials to exact time schedules. One such item of equipment is a bin-fed concrete batching plant.

Concrete can either be mixed and transported or produced at the building site as and when it is required thereby reducing transportation costs, avoiding delays and reducing material wastage. The distance travelled by a ready-mix concrete mixer and the time taken to reach its destination can affect the quality and cost of concrete. A mobile batching plant can be set-up within a hours and, depending on size it may not require planning permission, thereby saving the site manager budget and time spent filling out paperwork.

A concrete batching plant stores all the ingredients required for a specified concrete mix, dispatches them into a mixer, where they are homogeneously mixed to produce concrete ready for delivery to a concrete pump. The advantage to a construction site is that it offers fresh concrete delivered to exact specification for quality construction outcomes, reduces concrete delivery costs and avoids delivery delays. For high pour volumes such as for the flooring of a large commercial building, concrete needs to be poured at very tight timelines - scheduling is critical and a batching plant has the ability to meet these requirements.

Bin-Fed Concrete Batching Plant

There are different types of batching plants on the market. They are essential for operations requiring large quantities of concrete or for continuous high volume supplies over a number of days. Batch plant stock-piles prevent shortages caused by production or transportation difficulties. The concrete discharge height on some batch plants is suitable enough for concrete pumping too, again emphasising the benefits batch plants offer to project sites.

Types of Concrete Batching Plants

There are essentially two types of batching plants: a ready mixer and a central mix plant. A ready mix plant combines all the ingredients such as aggregates and cement. This is then discharged into a transit mixer truck and water is then added during transportation to the job site. A central mix plant combines the dry ingredients plus water. This is done at a central location and is computer assisted to ensure uniformity. 

Central mix batch plants can be further classified according to the additional equipment attached according to particular job requirements:

A bin-fed mobile batch plant is transportable and fitted with hydraulic off-loading legs, therefore no crane is required to lift it off the truck. The compact design means that they can be located at a project site and be up-and-running within an hour of arrival. A mobile batch plant can produce around 40m3 of concrete per hour. A cement silo can be located alongside a bin-fed batch plant.

Self-loading batch plants are ideal for use at building sites and operations that require 24/7 concrete production. The radial scraper loads the aggregates into a weigh hopper via a programmable computer. The mix is then placed into a pan mixer or drum mixer. They are electrically powered or diesel driven.

Batch plants can be fitted with a concrete mixer drum and are ideally suited to working on a job site. There is also the option of fitting a pan mixer and are ideally suited to precast yards. A dry batch plant can be set-up to supply a concrete truck mixer with aggregates a cement for concrete production via a conveyor belt discharge system.

Modern batch plants are integrated with advanced computer technology that allows for the generation of batching reports, inventory monitoring, concrete specification recipes - all of which allows for better and more cost effective concrete production.

Batch plant site location is important and there are a number of factors to be considered:

• position in such a way as to offer a free flow of heavy equipment traffic
• good drainage during inclement wet weather conditions so as not to affect the transportation of concrete away from the batching plant to job site.

A concrete batching plant is primarily used for road construction, commercial buildings, parking garages, dams and tunnel construction. They speed up the job of concrete production and delivery.

New and used or second hand batch plants are available from companies such as Utranazz Concrete Equipment Specialists.