Pan Mixer & Conveyor

We used the pan mixer and conveyor for the first time today. The stem walls had been bricked up and backfilled. Last week, all the rubble and dried concrete that had accumulated in the stem wall cavity was arduously cleaned and removed in preparation for the final concrete pour which when complete, would signal the end of the foundation phase. And today we were hoping to make a small dent in this exercise. After moving the giraffe and conveyor early this morning, mixing only began around 10 am, which meant that we had lost part of the day before we had begun.




Johan was concerned that the pan mixer would not work that well and was naturally skeptical about today's result. He's used to traditional concrete mixers and was expecting the pan mixer to leak like a sieve. It didn't.

We loaded six wheelbarrows of sand stone and cement at a time and this took a couple of minutes to mix. The loading and unloading of the hopper probably took the longest time as it was all done by hand using wheelbarrows. We made a special chute that allows us to empty the pan mixer directly into a wheelbarrow whilst the hopper & lifting assembly remains connected. The other option is to empty it directly into the hopper which can then be lifted up over a 4m ledge, but since our work was at ground level we used the wheelbarrow option.

Well, it turned out to be one of those days where everything went well. The pan mixer worked fantastically. We were even able to use the conveyor to load the cement into the mixer although this proved to be very dusty. The stone seemed to be the only problem as it was scraped around the drum making the chalk on blackboard screech that jarred the nerves a bit. This will be fixed tomorrow as Deon will come and set the machine properly. However, we made rapid progress and managed to mix around 12 cubic metres of concrete by just after lunch which is more than we will need on any day when we are ramming the walls.

Johan came away very impressed and promises never to use a traditional concrete mixer again. I came away happy as it was one more costly experimental item that has worked out as planned. Now we just need to test the hoist under normal working conditions and if it works, then the whole giraffe can be accepted into the building fold.