General Domestic and Commercial Projects in Kent

Domestic enquiries come in for shed, greenhouse and garden building bases, hot tub bases, gate and fence post concrete, garden wall footings, steps, paths, pond surrounds, kennel and stable floors, and oversite fill under a new floor.

Commercial and agricultural enquiries cover yard hardstandings, machine and plant bases, bollard and barrier foundations, tank and pump bases, feed and bin pads, weighbridge surrounds, and mass fill to disused tanks, cellars and voids.

They have nothing in common except this: each one takes a specific amount of concrete at a specific strength, and getting either wrong costs more than asking.

Choosing a mix when there is no specification

Most small projects arrive with no drawing and no engineer, which is normal and not a problem. The mix is then chosen from what the concrete has to do.

Three questions settle it. What will bear on it, and how heavy is that. Is it inside or outside, and will it see frost or salt. Is there any reinforcement in it. From those answers a designated BS 8500 mix follows: a general application mix such as GEN1 or GEN3 for unreinforced work, a paving mix such as PAV1 where it is outside and trafficked, or a reinforced concrete class where steel is involved.

Where the answers point at anything structural, the honest reply is that it needs designing. Kent Readymix will say so rather than supply a mix and hope.

Estimating an awkward volume

Everything reduces to length times width times depth in metres, but few of these projects are rectangles.

Break an irregular shape into rectangles, triangles and circles, calculate each, and add them. For a circular base, area is pi times the radius squared. For post holes, a single hole is small and forty of them are not, so count them and multiply.

Then allow a margin. Excavations are always slightly larger than they were drawn, and running short in the middle of a pour is far worse than having a little over. Your approved supplier will advise the allowance they would order on once they know what you are pouring into.

Being ready before the concrete arrives

The most common cause of a difficult pour is a site that is not finished when the lorry gets there. A ready site means the excavation dug to level, any formwork or shuttering fixed and braced, reinforcement in place on spacers, the ground clear of standing water, and enough people on site to move and finish the concrete once it is down.

Have the barrows, boards, tools and water there before the delivery rather than during it. Once concrete is discharged it is on a clock, and that is not the moment to be looking for a shovel.

Access, discharge and the right vehicle

Where a lorry can stand within chute reach, a standard delivery is the simplest option. Where it cannot, the choices are barrowing, a smaller mini-mix vehicle, a volumetric mixer, or a concrete pump.

Tell us the approach width, the standing position, anything overhead, and the distance from there to the pour. Kent Readymix passes that to an approved supplier who runs vehicles suited to it, so the vehicle that arrives can actually reach the work. Getting this right at enquiry stage is worth more than any other single detail you can give us.

Where to start

Send what you are building, the dimensions, what will sit on it, and how a lorry would reach it. That is enough for an approved supplier to confirm a mix and a quantity.

Most of our approved suppliers work on a pay-for-what-you-use basis and many can deliver next day. Your quotation, delivery and payment are agreed directly with the approved supplier appointed to your pour.