Good day, dear guests, friends and subscribers of my channel!
The article will focus on deception on the part of persons selling us commercial (factory) concrete. Of course, not everyone is doing this, but certainly not a minority!
Concrete mixer driver from 2011 to 2018 was my father-in-law. Therefore, all the information provided in the article is practically firsthand!
It should be noted right away that a mobile concrete mixer is a special technique, the main share of the working time which are difficult conditions, therefore the parts and mechanisms have an accelerated mechanical wear. One of the highly loaded units is the drum and the equipment that drives it. The cost of repairs per year reaches up to 250,000 rubles.
Also, similar units of equipment run on diesel fuel at a flow rate of 30 l / 100 km, which is also not cheap!
On average, a mixer driver earns up to 80,000 rubles a month of the season clean. without deception, up to 200,000 - by deceiving (Rostov region).
Therefore, in order to recapture this money and earn some money during the season, private traders who own such special equipment do not behave quite honestly, which is what the article is about.
Further, ahead of the topic, it should be noted that we will be able to recognize poor quality concrete only after the fact, i.e. after its hardening - this is a sad fact!
Why after the fact? Concrete is a composition of natural chemical elements that always have a different color and consistency. Our superficial assessment by eye is not a laboratory conclusion based on a number of examinations. You may have heard more than once how they say: If the concrete is blue, then there is more cement in the composition. This is a false statement, since different factories use different raw materials, and the statement is similar to the fact that you can determine the percentage of meat in a sausage by the color of the product!
So, the concrete mix has a number of basic parameters that we use when ordering:
- Volume (V)
- Strength grade (M)
- Waterproof grade (W)
- Mixture mobility (P)
In most cases, deception occurs when ordering goods for ads that do not belong to the manufacturing plant. 99% of such ads are a driver with his own concrete mixer truck (hereinafter - mixer) or a person who owns a small fleet of their own mixers with hired drivers.
A good plant does not need to be advertised, but an individual person does not need to be advertised, so we see signs on each pillar of every village "concrete", "concrete delivery", "concrete is cheap" - all this is the work of hands private traders. How can they survive in the midst of enormous competition? Of course, you need to reduce the price - but keep silent about the quality, and say "excellent quality, I have a special factory price"!
Scheme No. 1 - Volume
The simplest unverifiable scheme is underload. You cannot track the lack of concrete during unloading. Of course, we are talking about volumes above 10-15 cubic meters. This is the first of the schemes where even an experienced person can be deceived and this scheme is not checked even after the mixture has hardened. Any concrete composition shrinks, any formwork has an error and deformation during the pouring process, any dug trench is not ideal.
According to the father-in-law, an experienced crook, after you contact him and discuss the details of the delivery of concrete, in 90% of cases he will definitely come to the building site is solely in his own interests - this is the main stage for him, at which he assesses the price and looks closely, including you!
Scheme No. 2 - Brand
Understatement scheme. It is impossible to visually distinguish concrete of a brand that even differs by 100 units (M100 and M150, M150 and M200, M200 and M300). Therefore, the class of concrete for compliance with the imported one is checked only after the mixture has hardened, after 28 days.
As soon as you hint that you intend to make "cubes" - 50% of drivers will merge or recalculate the cost of the order. Others may ask to pour a cube from the first or from the last mixer that arrived, which also suggests that some cars will be understated.
Scheme No. 3 - Additives
This scheme is a scheme for underestimating the ratio of additives (additives) that increase any properties of concrete. Whether it is the fluidity of the mixture or water resistance, there can always be a deliberate underestimation of concentration.
The mobility of the mixture is in other words the stiffness of the solution, the higher the P index, the higher the flow rate, in practice it is measured by the cone draft. Varies from P1 to P5. For concrete pumps, it is used above P3 to make it easier for the mechanism to pump the mixture.
As the father-in-law said, colleagues had a case when the customer ordered P4 concrete so that the mixture with increased fluidity would be easier to row with shovels in the trench, and for the mixer driver there was a surprise arrival at the place, - a concrete pump was waiting for him (you may have heard that if you pump a bad mixture with such a unit, it can simply fail), the carrier turned around and merged with its concrete. As the father-in-law says, in order not to drain the concrete and not get on the big money, the driver brought the consistency of concrete by eye by buying 10 bags of cement and 5 liters. liquid soap and poured it all into my 9-cc mixer.
Scheme No. 4 - Crushed stone
Substitution of crushed granite for gravel (gravel). Crushed granite is a rock mined by crushing boulders to a certain fraction. Gravel - most often mined by screening natural rocks. Gravel is cheaper and has a rounded smooth shape, respectively, and concrete turns out worse due to the lack of the necessary adhesion between natural and artificial stone.
Scheme # 5 - Bluff
This scheme is appropriate when ordering according to a "plate" and looks a little like a fraudulent one, a problem is artificially created a few hours before the delivery of the concrete mixture to the object. Imagine the following situation: all forces are mobilized, a concrete pump is already being laid out at the customer's site at a construction site, all workers have already gathered and are waiting for the delivery of the mixture. And here it is: the driver calls from the place of loading and says: "The concrete production plant is out of order, some part has broken" (anything can break down).
The customer is shocked and his first thoughts are clear to everyone: "How so? The workers came, they need to be paid, the concrete pump must definitely be paid for the minimum wage. " And then the driver helps out, he says: “I know a very high-quality plant, but I need time to get there. It will not take a lot of time, but the truth is there is concrete for only 100-200 rubles. more expensive and delivery will cost me a little higher. "
Do you understand why? The driver is loaded at the same factory, which did not break down, and creates an emergency himself. Actors - in a word! :-)))
The rest of the schemes are based on variations of these five.
How to protect yourself?
- Delivery agreement - this is a prerequisite. In fact, his conclusion lasts no more than 30 minutes, since the finished forms are already in the form of a template at the factory.
- Each concrete mixer truck must be accompanied by concrete passport with a wet seal. The passport contains all 4 of the above parameters + frost resistance in cycles (F) and date / time of loading. (If the supplier intends to deceive you, the drivers of the first mixers will always shout that the documents are in the last car).
- Make an order most in the window (where orders are taken) at the factory or always be together with the driver before loading.
Of course, these tips are not a guarantee of the quality of the mixture, but they will help you to hedge. The main assessment of the quality of concrete will always be checking its hardened state using standard methods:
- sclerometer (Schmidt's hammer);
- ultrasound;
- squeezing cubes.
Be vigilant, good luck and good!
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