Unexpected Brochure Photo

A couple of mornings ago, Hughie the MD walked up to my desk holding up a copy of the new S 65 SXF brochure. When he reached my desk he opened it up to the back page and showed me the photo I took of the machine at Wembley filling up the inner back cover! It was a decent surprise and gave a me a laugh. It was nice to see another of my shots being used in a brochure!

This was the German version, for readers interested in a new S 65 SXF concrete pump, we should have brochures in English very soon!

The Big Beast - S 65 SXF

The biggest boom pump in Europe has arrived in the UK...

Unveiling the new Schwing S 65 SXF!

The first of these incredible machines has become the property of London Concrete Pumping. It's first job was on the new Wembley Park development and I was fortunate enough to be offered a chance to visit the site and take some pictures from a cage suspended from a crane. As you can see they came out rather well!

The best ones were taken with my 10mm wide angle lens which allowed me to get a good portion of Wembley Stadium in the background too (which does give a good comparison of size)!

With a vertical reach of just under 65 metres you can see this beast of a machine easily reaches to pour the slab at the back of the 11th floor. It shouldn't have too much trouble with 12 or 13 either.

This is only the seventh S 65 SXF so far produced in the world and is the actual machine featured being built in the promotional video below.



And one more picture...

A Day in the Life (of an S20)

A few months back I was invited by James Harding at Hardcrete to take some video footage of a day's pour in Chorleywood. They had recently bought a new Schwing S20 mobile pump and were happy to allow me to film for the day while they poured the 150 cubic metre concrete foundation for a new home.


We particularly wanted to show the main feature of the new S20 in that it could set up without extending outriggers beyond the edge of the vehicle itself, demonstrating that the machine could set up in very tight locations - a good thing for working in cities and towns in particular.

While I was there everyone working on the project was happy to say how pleased they were with the new Schwing machine - which is always great to hear.

We even set up a time-lapse camera and got the drone out for a bit of aerial footage! Several weeks later I had managed to edit it down to under 7 minutes. The result is above...

Cover Shot

A few months back our colleagues in Germany were putting together a new brochure for the latest SP 2800 static pump and asked me if I could provide a photo. This meant tracking down a 2800 machine we had recently sold that was working on a site not too far away and that I could get on site to get some photos. Thankfully such an opportunity existed over near Canary Wharf.

Unlike mobile boom pumps which can make for wonderful shots because of the boom arched majestically against a skyline, static pumps don't naturally lend themselves to looking good in pictures. They are typically hidden away in a dismal corner out of the way which makes it even more difficult to get a flattering photograph. However as luck would have it, this one had a backdrop which included a raised railway line (the DLR), some buildings and if I waited for the right moment, the sun between the buildings which would reflect in the water on the ground near the pump.

The Germans were very happy with the result and as you can see, used one of my shots on the front cover of the new brochure, which arrived here at the office a few weeks later!

Her's my original shot:

New Reptor in Ireland

There may not be any snakes in Ireland but there is certainly now one Reptor! Scott, our chief engineer was down in Oranmore (near Galway) yesterday commissioning a new S 38 SX Reptor for its new owners.

They began the pour at 7am and had finished pouring the 200m³ by 1pm with every load going straight through - as you'd expect from a new Schwing.

Now is it off to celebrate with a Guinness or a Jameson's?

Concrete Manual On Disc

A couple of months back I was asked to dig out any copies of a CD we once did (before my time here) of a concrete placing manual. After opened a large number of boxes in storage I finally found the original master of the file which turned out to be a pdf of scanned pages from a manual.

The task was then to press another batch of discs with a slightly different front cover with more up to date shots of our machines (including Reilly's new S 38 SX). I thought an updated file might be a good idea too and so did an OCR (optical character recognition) on the images so people could search through the file for particular words and phrases.

I've pressed up music CDs before but not data ones but the concept is pretty much the same so sent the files off to the local disk pressers and hey presto - several boxes arrived this morning with the above merchandise! So if you'd like a concrete placing manual on disc, you know where to come!

Stadium Tour

Yesterday I left very early to make the long drive up to St Helens (between Liverpool and Manchester) to get a shot of the new S 38 SX Reptor at work on site with Reilly's. Unfortunately the job was cancelled at the last minute so instead, Mark Reilly rose to the challenge and we took the pump round to their local Rugby stadium and set it up there. The pump driver set up the boom to look as if it were pumping concrete to some imaginary job on (or over) the roof of the stadium and I got the necessary shots!

Of course it's a bit of a give away that there's no truck mixer, no workmen, in fact no job site paraphernalia at all. However the point was to show the reach and to some extent the flexibility of the new 5 section boom of Schwing's latest mobile offering - and I think we at least did that.

Showing Concrete

Yesterday was my annul trip to Birmingham NEC to visit the UK Concrete Show. It's always a good opportunity to catch up with a few people and to see the new development in the world of all things concrete.

The highlight this year was to see the large Utiform display area and catch up with Ian (our Utiform representative). We work with Utiform and sell their screed pumps and other products. They had a much smaller set up last year so it was great to see them expanding their reach this time round.

An Interesting Puzzle

As regular readers will know, a part of my job (a part I particularly enjoy) is to visit clients on site and get photos of their Schwing pumps and other Schwing Stetter equipment in action. The photos normally end up on our office walls in one form or another and on our website. I'm not a trained photographer but I'd like to think I have a reasonable eye and occasionally an image comes out particularly well.

One such image turned up after I spent some time with a camera up at the Merseylink Gateway bridge project where Reillys had three Schwing pumps working at the same time. We were so pleased with this image that we turned it into a puzzle - just for something a bit different and interesting. (It also features this month in the Schwing Stetter calendar!)

Last weekend I decided it was time to have a go at doing the puzzle. So on Saturday afternoon I cleared the dinning room table and emptied the pieces out onto it. For some extra interest, I rigged up my camera above the table to take a shot every thirty seconds to create a time-lapse video of the puzzle being done.


The 1000-piece puzzle came together over the course of the weekend with help from the whole family.

Sadly the camera did move a bit during the project - it was held to the room light fitting with cello-tape (this was a spur of the moment idea - not a major production!) so whilst I've tried to compensate in 'post production', there is a bit of movement and at times the corners are cut off. However if you can get past that, and like puzzles (and time lapse photography), and possibly concrete pumps, you might enjoy this little video...  (It's 1 minute, 21 seconds long - in case that matters to you...)

Need A Lift?

On a recent visit to the Merseylink bridge building site I was
interested to see a Schwing S 24 X on top of an isolated platform. Another  S 24 X was at ground level, pumping concrete up to the raised one and the end of the lower one was connected directly to the pipeline on the boom of the upper one so the concrete was being pumped from ground level through both booms to the end of the upper one. The lower machine was doing the pumping while the other was placing the concrete!

I need to thank Mark Reilly from Reilly Concrete Pumping for this wonderful shot above showing the Schwing pump being lifted onto the platform - and also for the picture on the right here showing the crane about to lift it up - click on the shot to enlarge it.

Apparently a number of methods were tried in order to get the pump up onto the pylon including a large net before this 'mobile platform' was tried.

Mark very kindly showed me round the whole area where Reillys, who are supplying the concrete Pumps for the project had no less than 7 Schwing Pumps on Site! Three of them can be seen in the shot at the bottom including their new S 52 SX.

My Lovely Mug

This morning we were the proud recipients of our new promotional coffee mugs! We have been drinking our hot beverages out of some very nice mugs (at the back here) up until now, its just that we though it would be nice to add a little humour and brightness to the experience. And so voilà - here they are!

The idea was two concrete pumps, a mobile pump and a static, pumping concrete round the mug endlessly and obliviously into each other's hoppers. The picture was cleverly executed by the chap who does our Christmas cards (we've been busy sorting those out too...) and the mug people even managed to make the image wrap all the way round going through the handle. Good work!

So now we have our new mugs, if that isn't a good excuse to visit Schwing Stetter for a nice new concrete pump I don't know what is!

Animated Ability

The people at our Head Office in Germany have been busy of late. Alwyne, one of our very good sales chaps came back from Bauma with a memory stick for me with some really good animations which the Germans had put together. They show the new S 38 SX 'Reptor' boom opening and reaching into some really tight spots.

One of this blogs most popular posts has been the one showing the S 36 S reaching into the workshop space. These animations show how the new Reptor (as in Reptile - Snake like flexibility...) can reach into a difficult space in a similar manner, and also shows it opening up under a restricted height (7.4 metres since you ask).

I have put them both on a new web page on out website. You can also see them below...

Linked Images

A short while ago I wrote a post about the first new generation Schwing S 52 SX Mobile pump in the UK. The machine promptly went up to its new owners - Reilly Concrete Pumping in St Helens and after a quick showing at the UK Concrete Show, was out working almost straight away.

One of its first jobs was working on the new Mersey Gateway Bridge project which offered an excellent opportunity to go and take some photos of the new machine at work. The S 52 SX was one of three Schwing pumps on site. The other two were both Schwing S 43 SX machines and between the three of them provided some wonderful photographic scenes (as well as getting the bridge built).

Below is a selection of the photos I took on site (click on an image to enlarge it):

A Big Machine

A couple of days ago a very large box arrived which took our engineers several hours to open... Well actually that's not quite it, but we did take delivery of this, the first of the new generation Schwing S 52 SX mobile pumps which, had it come in a box (I'm not sure how it would have been transported) would certainly have taken a while to free from it's packaging.

One thing is certain though, and that's that this is indeed a big machine. Being able to pump concrete 52 metres into the air obviously requires a big machine. If you think about it 52 metres is actually a long way. It is more than the length of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

This machine is on it's way to Reilly Concrete Pumping based in St Helens, (between Liverpool and Manchester) and I hope to head up that way and get some shots of it once it's in action when I can.

Fulfilling A Tall Order

Over in Saudi Arabia, what will be the tallest building in the world is currently under construction. Kingdom Tower in Jeddah will be over 1km high which is taller than four Canary Wharf towers standing on top of each other. It will house over half a million square metres of floor space across 240 floors. At 120m down, the foundations go deep enough to bury the London Eye or just leave the rooves of the three Barbican residential towers visible.

If you have already guessed that Schwing Stetter will be playing a major role in this development you would be absolutely correct. Indeed Schwing Stetter construction equipment and expertise is being used across the board.

To avoid long drives and unpredictable delays in the concrete supply, the concrete is being provided by two on-site Stetter HN 3.0 Batching Plants. This is being pumped through 3,750 meters of pipeline by four Schwing SP 8800 D stationary pumps and placed by five Schwing Separate Placing Booms (3 SPB 35 and 2 SPB 30s). There are also four Schwing S42SX, truck-mounted concrete pumps.

Pumping concrete to these heights means that equipment will be working at pressures significantly above 200 bar. Every part of the pumping equipment, delivery line and fastening equipment will need to be reliable and durable so as to handle this pressure with high output volumes for the long period of time it will take to complete this project. This is when it's good to know about Schwing Stetter's reputation for reliability.

Given that a Schwing pump holds the record for the highest ever vertical pumping distance, it is perhaps not surprising that Schwing Stetter was asked to provide equipment and expertise for this work. For more details please see the full news story on our website.

Hope For A Schwing From Above

Andrew at Camfauds Concrete Pumps recently alerted me to a story in The Construction Index about the building of a wind farm in Scotland, featuring a really good aerial shot (thanks to 360 Aerial Imagery Ltd) of the works. What was interesting to us was the two Schwing concrete pumps also in shot doing the work.

Scott, our chief engineer here was able to look at the picture and straight away identify them as a Schwing S34X and a Schwing S39SX. He even knew who they belonged to.

The actual story was about Hope Construction Materials having supplied the concrete for the foundations for 19 new wind turbines at Aikengall II Community Wind Farm, East of Edinburgh. The turbines, set to be commissioned in August 2016 will stand 145 metres tall and apparently be amongst the tallest in the UK and will collectivly generate 68.4 Megawatts of locally sourced energy, supplying more than 42,000 homes.

Hope provided almost 12,000 cubic metres of ready-mixed concrete from their Dunbar and Dalkieth ready mix plants for the project being built by renewable energy specialists Community Windpower Ltd.

It would seem Schwing Stetter was helping out too, pumping and placing the concrete.

Still Hold The Record

I was recently looking into records for concrete pumping and was pleasantly surprised to find that we still hold the word record for vertical distance pumping of 715m which was achieved using a Schwing SP4000S stationary concrete pump by the team working on the Parbati Hydroelectric Project in northern India back in 2009.

The project was to create two pressure shafts each 1550 m long x 3.5 m diameter inclined at 30° to create a vertical drop of 750 metres. The main contractors, Gammon India Limited, chose Schwing-Stetter to provide all the concreting equipment for the job including batching plants, transit mixers and concrete pumps.

The two tunnels had to first be excavated with a TBM from the bottom up and then a steel liner was installed by lowering each 6 meter section from the top and welding it in place as they went. The surrounding annulus then needed to be back-filling with concrete (around 7,000m³ for each shaft) and this was pumped from the foot of the shaft upwards over a total 1.5km length (and vertical rise of 750m) and into place. We are talking nearly ¾ of a kilometre upwards here!

A total distance pumped of 1½km in a single line push would be impressive in it's own right without even having any vertical component. Setting the vertical record at 715 metres at the same time is astonishing.

The concrete pressure reached was over 220 bar as they pumped to the top section and the concrete at the top continued to flow at 12m³/hr.

What is even more astonishing is that the SP4000 which did the work is a medium range pump and not even Schwing's most powerful model, which is the SP 8800. In addition to that, the only ware parts that needed changing  during the 7,000m³ concrete pour (plus around 2,000m³ of water) were two kidney seals.

To get some idea of the high specification of the machinery we are dealing with here, when cleaning out the pipe with water any gap between the main wearing parts in the pump would have made it impossible to generate the water pressure required. It would have come squirting out of the smallest of gaps. However even after setting such a record pumping concrete, the SP4000 was able to pump water at this pressure - proof of the self-sealing and low wear features of the Schwing ROCK valve.

The Schwing SP4000 not only set the world record for concrete pumping, it took the world record in its stride and kept going! What an amazing piece of engineering!

Schwing Visible From Space

It seems our equipment has been captured by the Google satellites working away in Chiswick last year. If you visit W4 5XU on Googlemaps you will see building No 7 of the Chiswick Park development in the process of being built. Circled above are the low emission Schwing SP2800 static pump and the SPB30 placing boom used to build the new 12 floor, 31,000 m² building designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners.

Thanks to Andrew from Camfauds who kindly alerted us to this. They were supplying the Schwing concrete pumping equipment to Careys who had the contract for the building.

The structural work was finished earlier this year and building No 7 is currently being fitted out and should be ready for new tenants towards the end of the year.

Crossrail Video

Back in October last year I was invited to go and visit one of the Crossrail sites where a Schwing pump was being used by Kelly Formwork to pour the concrete 'base' slab inside the rail tunnels. While there I took the opportunity to shoot some video of what was going on. I went back again last week to get some final shots and a couple of extra interviews. Here is the finished edited result...



On the day I was there Kelly Formwork used our SP3500 to pump concrete through over 1.3km of horizontal pipeline, finishing the pour in one of the tunnels and setting a new UK record for concrete distance pumping in the process.

Everyone involved was very pleased with the equipment and service Schwing Stetter had provided - and were happy to say so. It's always good to get positive feedback like this.

It was also really great to have a chance to experience the Crossrail project for myself, walk through some tunnels including under the Thames and see the tunnel development process.

Heading Up North

On Friday I headed up North to visit a couple of our machines on site. It was a reasonably early 4:30am set off time which meant I reached Leeds a little after 9 o'clock. They were using a Schwing S39SX to pour slabs in a new medium rise construction near the city centre (see below).

Then it was off to Preston where Lancashire Country Council were using a Schwing S43SX to place concrete under a new section of road which they were widening (see above).

There was a light layer of snow blanketing the countryside alongside the M62 on the way to Preston which helped make the area very picturesque. It looked like a lovely part of the country - even if just from the windows a passing vehicle on the motorway.

Everyone I spoke to was very happy with their Schwing equipment which is always good to hear when you have travelled that far.

Come mid afternoon it was time to head back down to London. I arrived back just after 7pm after a long but pleasant and fruitful day.