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.

A Great Reception

If there's one thing you can say about our engineers at Schwing Stetter, it's that they are versatile. We have recently been making some adjustments to the workshop area, extending the mezzanine floor and sprucing up the reception area. And it was none other than our own engineers who did the major work.

We now have quite bit more upstairs floor space to accommodate our expanding parts inventory, and a much nicer front reception area (as you can see above).

Here are a few photos from different stages of the work...

Staircase reversed

Our Engineers' steelwork taking shape

The floorboards down and the new reception desk

Extra space for more (genuine Schwing Stetter) parts storage

Our engineers even install signage (note the new ceiling is now in place too)!

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.

Merry Christmas

Well our Christmas cards have all gone out and we're just about ready to head off on our short winter break and begin the promised festivities! Have a wonderful Christmas and we'll see you in the new year!

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!

Surprise Date

Our 2017 calendars have arrived from Germany and guess who's got the January spot? The opening picture is the one I took up at Merseylink of the three Reilly's pumps at dawn!

I knew they were putting my picture in there somewhere but it's nice to open the calendar and actually see it 'in the flesh' as it were. Nice also to realise that my 'work' will be hanging on thousands of walls around the world, if only for a month!

They have cropped the original a little differently to how I did (see mine below) - basically because theirs needs to fit into a square rather than a rectangle - I've think they've done it just fine though.

Happy January everyone (when it comes...)

New Platform

As we constantly strive for better ways to do things and increase our productivity, it was decided to make use of a whole lot of unused space a few metres above the floor in the back corner a create another mezzanine floor.

Robs design and workmanship once again came to the fore to build everything needed and over the last few weeks the whole thing was build and assembled from scratch. He was even able to tell me how weight each step was able to hold. Such a talented team we have...

The space to fill

Rob assembling the staircase

First part of steel structure in place

Structure taking shape

Flooring down

The view from the new platform

All finished