Construction is a booming business and one whose demands are expected to increase in the coming years. According to the World Economic Forum, the population of the world’s urban areas is growing by 200,000 people a day, and all those new inhabitants need housing, medical services, schools, transportation infrastructure and more. Construction of urban infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing population will almost certainly keep construction contractors and laborers in high demand in the coming years.

In the construction business, efficiency and reliability are at a premium. But on many projects, especially large, complex projects, it’s easy to fall behind. The global consulting group McKinsey estimates that an enormous 98% of large-scale construction projects incur cost overruns or delays. And the average large-scale construction project ends up falling 20 months — almost two years — behind schedule.

For the prevention of issues like these, it’s imperative to use the best, most efficient equipment on the market. When it comes to pouring concrete, concrete pumps offer substantial advantages in efficiency and ease of use.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND CONCRETE PUMPING
What is a concrete pump? A concrete pump is a tool used for transferring freshly mixed liquid concrete to the location on a construction site where it is needed. It works using a valve system and the basic principles of hydraulics.


When concrete is required, a mixing truck first mixes concrete within its rotating drum. Then the truck pours its liquid concrete into a hopper, which continues to churn the concrete so it will not solidify. From there, the concrete pump sucks the liquid concrete out of the hopper, through a valve system, and into the area where it needs to be laid down, sometimes with the use of auxiliary hoses.

A twin-cylinder hydraulic concrete pump’s internal workings typically consist of two parallel cylinders. The cylinders have drive pistons inside them that move them back and forth in opposite directions. As one cylinder moves forward, the other moves back. As one cylinder moves back, the other moves forward.

The first cylinder, also known as the material cylinder, pulls concrete out of the hopper. The second cylinder, the discharge cylinder, pushes the concrete out of the pump in the location where it is needed. The two pistons work in tandem, alternately pulling in and pushing out their volumes of liquid concrete. The hydraulic flow created by the continuous flow of concrete is what causes the two cylinders to alternate back and forth. This continuous flow is also important to keep the liquid concrete from solidifying.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF CONCRETE PUMPS
Concrete pumps come in a couple of basic varieties — line pumps and boom pumps.


1. LINE PUMPS
Line pumps pump liquid concrete in hoses at about ground level until the concrete reaches its destination. The hoses offer the flexibility to snake through alleys and around houses where the truck may not be able to park. Below are a few examples of types of line pumps:

Stationary pumps: A stationary pump, or trailer-mounted pump, is the most basic form of concrete pump. It consists of a pump mounted onto a small trailer. A separate truck is necessary to tow a stationary pump to job sites. A stationary pump also does not have a boom, so separate pipelines or placing hoses are necessary to carry the concrete from the pump to where it needs to go. A separate placing boom is also necessary to place the concrete precisely.
Truck-mounted static pump: Truck mounted static pumps are mounted onto truck beds, so employees can drive them directly to job sites. These types of concrete pump trucks don’t have placing booms, though, so they will require the use of separate placing hoses to get the concrete where it needs to go.
Truck mixer pump: This all-in-one model is a concrete mixer with a pump attached so it can pump directly from the mixer. This model is efficient in many applications, though it requires a job site setup that allows for driving a large mixing truck right up next to the place where the concrete must be poured.