Here is the back ground, I sand parking lots during the winter months using a 2 yd spreader on the back of a 1 ton F350. 2 tons per load, 10 to 15 loads per day. (20 to 30 tons) or roughfly 3,000 tons a year. The supplier I get my P-Rock from is our only local ready mix plant. They have a monopoly on the sand, P-Rock, and most all other processed material used in town durning the winter. They have been raising there price 10% to 15% every year. it is now up to $45 a ton for clean P-Rock or plain sand. That is $90 a load for each load I spread. Add that to my costs I have to charge roughfly $300 per load which I feel bad for my customers but have to charge it to keep that part of my business growing durning the winter. I am looking for a way to reduce my overhead back to sameware ware it was 10 years ago. $7 a ton for materials.maybe a little more. During the spring and summer I run a sweeping business that picks up the same P-Rock that I and other contractors put down during the winter. It is contaminated with ground dirt, rocks, mud, bottles, cigarette butts etc. If I had a simple way to wash the material I picked up I should be able to save $30 to $35 a ton. The material needs to be clean so there is no ware for moisture to collect. That way during the winter it will not freeze. It would also look better then dumping garbage back on my lots during the winter. I have a small lot with water available to help. The lot is next to a fish spawning creek. I live in one of the greenest communities in the US. (Capitol of the largest park in the us) So there can be no water runoff. I would like to ether find a small wash plant that will give me a clean product well reusing the water. or another way to clean the rock good enough to reuse. What ever way I go it does not have to be real productive, 20 to 50 tons per hour would make me happy. I would also like to make this a 1 man operation. Anyone have any ideas??? Dwan
it sounds that if the contamanation are smoke butts and such that maby an arange of filters suck as window screens and some watter running it into that could pick out alot of your trash?
G,day Dwan....does it really need to be a washing process?. Could a dry screen with a blower clean it up?
Squzzy, yes it may work. Something to think about. It is usually wet around here so I would have to work around the weather but worth a thought.
Dwan, I have "constructed" a couple of rough screens while out on the mine sites in the bush. You might call them "Powered Grizzlies" and they were rough old affairs with all the hall marks of bush mechanics and "go with what you have got". However, I always had designs on building something a little more elaborate. Where I get my sand they have Pegson machines which start at about $400,000 and go up . I figured that was a lot of bottles of JD for a fairly simple task....and they don't make ones for smaller operator. My idea involves an old industrial fan (DB fans we used to call them) some screen meshes and the guts of a 3 point linkage side bar sickle mower. If you can run your material through some 1" mesh to remove the big crap and then run it through say a 5/16" agitated mesh I'm wondering wether this would do the trick...and get the butts. I'd suggest doing some simple hand tests with some galvanised mesh (sort of like seives) and see what moisture content would work. One screen plant I know of has a fan blowing across it to remove paper and fine grass. The problem with wet washing is that if you already have some contaminents like paper/butts then they become more difficult to separate and all soggy like. Dry, you may need some dust containment but this is an elaborate arrangement of cheap, nasty green shade cloth. Anyway...its just an idea I've had in my head for about 18 years.
Our council run sand cleaners on the back of agricultural tractors up and down the beach to remove the crud. This seems to make the sand clean enough for kids to play in. Maybe you could Google these contraptions and steal a few ideas.
I'm with Squizzy on this one. Do it dry and keep it dry I reckon will be a lot easier, especially as dry will be lighter and by the time you've shovelled the first 30t through it .......................... Seriously with the enviroment you are in I like the idea of fine green mesh net fencing .................and a couple of old jet engines to move the lighter stuff.
Have you seen a rotary screen? Basically you make a pipe out of some screen and put a motor on it so that it rolls in place, not too fast though. It does the same job as a shaker screen, but without having to change direction all the time. One end has a hopper that you load with a front end loader, and i think an auger meters it out onto the screen, which runs slightly down hill, what you want falls thru the screen, what you dont, falls off the end. Ive seen them used to screen topsoil, compost, and to harvest earth worms, if they can do that they might be more friendly to wet material? That should get the cig butts, bottle caps, cans and other junk out, i dunno about the dirt... that might make for another operation.
trommel Trommel screen, bang on stumpjumper thats the baby you need. This will show you exactly http://www.cdpplant.co.uk/trommel-screens-c100002.html I bet you'll build your own :thumbsup
There is the flip screen, normally loader mounted: http://www.flipscreen.net/ but I don't think these would not go down to the size needed, and probably a bit exxy.
Dwan , I feel for you on the monopoly. I think your on the right track. But as another thought, is it possible to get some good sand from another source. Even if its 50 miles away maybe haul a couple of loads in the summertime along with another errand at the same time. Then stock pile it at your shop? Good Luck , it makes me ugly when I have to buy from one source that is way higher than they should be. doug
I made a large plate about 4 ft. diam. with 1/8 inch holes on 1inch centers put it in a up-right drum about 6 inches from the bottom ran a postive displacement blower under it with hot air blowing thru it with a cyclone on top. It caught all of the light stuff and cleaned the sand good. might need a screen to get the big stuff off before it goes thru the drum.
How about something like this? http://www.ez-screen.com/interior.cfm?pid=ez 1200xl I know there are a ton of small screens like this out there. Might be able to pick one up at a decent price right now. Dont knock the one company for material supplies. I have family in Ketchikan that own a redmix and quarry. They do quite well, being they are really the only ones in town that do this. They also have a few set ups on other islands.
DigDug, They are the only suppler available. no others within our road system. Turbo21835 Thanks for the link I will look into the 750 a little further. Squizzy Had a sales man try to sell me one of those flipscreens but as you have already pointed out it will not screen small enough. The Trommel screens look like they would do the job but are more then I would like to spend at this time. I would still need to wash the rock when finished so there is nothing for moisture to cling to causing it to freeze into a clump. The rocks 3/8" when frozen and clean break apart with ease but if dirty it takes a lot of work to brake the frozen clumps up. I have been able to drive over the material with my pickup head lifted on the vacume truck and set the suction at about 50% and it picks up the light material out of the mess. The large material we have been picking by hand. This type of cleaning still leaves the fines which are my biggest problem. To help keep the material from freezing I have been spraying 1 gal. of RV antifreeze per ton on the stock pile which has been working down to about 10 degrees. @ $4.00 per gal it adds up when covering over 1,000 tons. Still looking for a good way to wash the finished product. When done I could rinse it with the RV antifreeze. My cost for this material alone this year has been just under $90,000 plus handling. I should be able to reduce this to less then $20,000 because I get paid to sweep it up. I hate to though it away. I should be able to recycle it. Due to the fact it rains (277 days a year) here so much I am still looking at a wet process. I want to thank you all for your input and I will research them all to find out which way I will try first. I currently have about 400 tons to clean.
Dwan, your problem has been intriguing me, the only problem for me is that all of our screening is done dry, very dry. A few people here I know, wash aggregate for road sealing and they have pressure sprays mounted above a vibrating mesh screen so that the fines are washed through the screen leaving the clean aggregate. I was also wondering if you put the rock over a vibrating screen to take off the oversize and then use a small sand screw, whether this would work in your situation. It would wash the fines off the rock and float things like cigarette butts off as well. Here is a link to one, it gives you an idea how it works. http://www.parnaby.co.uk/NEW_PAGES/sand.html Rn'R.
A little to the extrem, but why not buy a piece of property that has gravel and process your own? I see no reason why you couldn't do that and maybe sell some too, so the other isn't only game in town. But even if you can't get permits for whatever reason to run the pit, you should still be able to supply yourself and make the investment back in short order.
If you need to keep material dry(after cleaning) you might have to put up a hoop building to store it in.Good luck:usa
This is kind of what I had in mind but after further research I find it takes a lot of water, CLEAN water to make it work right. and I have to watch the runoff real close because of the salmon stream adjacent to my property. As for as buying property, Here to run a pit or extract any material one needs a mining permit to operate. and that is another bunch of hoops and a few years to get the permits. Still worth looking into. Importing by barge is still not out of the question, but then what do I do with the material I have pick up sweeping, I can't see just dumping it. Just doesn't seem to be a easy way.
Keep working at it. If there was an easy way, someone would already be doing it. If you can figure it out, no reason you couldn't charge a little for others to dump their sweepings, then sell them material as well in the winter. Maybe some type of sand screw with a settling tank to re clean the water, then just muck out the tank when it gets full.
Dwan, what about putting some type of suspended screening in you sweeper hopper. So when the material comes off the elevator chain it has to fall through the screen. The trash could be cleaned off the top of screen and bagged/burnt and the screenings will be in the hopper???? Just day dreaming here. I am sure you'll figure something out.
using crushed gravel Hello, I'm interested to hear about using gravel at these parking lots. If the gravel would be crushed adequately, could it serve as a substitute for sand?
Sand works best on clear ice. but it will freeze rock hard when left in the cold. ( remember I live in a rain forest so everything is wet) I started using P-Rock (3/8") because if it is clean and dry it will not freeze hard but will brake up with little effort. Also our ready mix plant had a surplus of it and it cost $1.50 per ton back in 1984. Sand was $3.50 at that time. The P-Rock also works real well on hard packed snow ware the sand sinks in and needs to be redone about 3 times to 1 application of P-Rock. of course crushed rock gives the best traction but freezes a little harder then river run rock with smooth edges. The best all around is what I call maintenance sand. it is a mix of both sand and rock. Sand will cover about 3 times the area that the same amount of rock will cover. If it is just ice I am working with and above freezing I try to use only sand. anything below 25 degrees and more then 1/2 hour away from the shop I use the rock. For a 2 yard hopper and I plan on been out for long I will pore 2 gal of RV antifreeze over the rock and it never freezes. It takes about 5 gal to do the same with sand. I also keep the sander covered with a tarp when out which helps keep the wind and snow out of the mix. We do not use salt or any other chemical here because of the import expense. In a area ware heavy equipment works I have used up to 3/4 crush rock. Barge landings, gravel pit, construction sales yard, etc. Heavy loaders like the larger rock.
How to get some sand etc Hi Dwan. I'm not sure if it's applicable in your area, but if you have a lot of concrete structures over time which are demolished for new structures, perhaps you could take in the demolished concrete and crush it with an inexpensive jaw crusher. Concrete when crushed gives you a lot of fines depending on the jaw opening and some pea sized gravel/aggregate as well. If you do some simple screening you could have sand, pea gravel and 3/4"-1" roadbase material which you could use and/or sell. You would also charge to remove concrete and building masonry waste so you're financially better off at each end of the process. And you're recycling waste which may otherwise be costing your community in landfill disposal costs. Of course this is all predicated on having some concrete or building waste available in your area. If you have, then the crushing aspect is quite easy. Regards Dave
I did a google search on sand and rock washers and found several, a bunch of interesting sites. there is also a lot of sand washing videos on utube, who would have thought. Good luck. I am sure you`ll stumble onto a self contained sand washer. You definetly have the right idea of reusing what you gather. Is there any chance to have the aggragate plant that produced it in the first place rescreen it for you for a small fee. Or have them buy it back at a reduced rate, for what they are charging, even slighty contaminated it seems it would still have some value.
The recycling waste part is part of whit I am trying to do. Just that the sweepings I pick up are anyware from 70% to 99% what I need for sanding next season so most of the work is done. I am not looking for new work in addition to what I have to do now. Just streamline what is happening now. I have more work then any 2 men could do in a life time. I have also googled sand washing and watched hours of equipment doing sand washing on the side of bigger projects. I was hoping someone out there had run across a simple inexpencive way to wash the rock. If I had more time in life I may venture into a large production plant producing everything from shot rock down to sand. 2 things come to mind that keep me from doing this. City permits (green community) and I am running out of wax . I have been burning the candle at both ends sense back in the 50's and I fine it is getting harder to put in any more then a weeks worth of 18 hours days in a roll with out feeling a bit tired all the time. All I want is to wash a few little rocks. Thanks friends for all the thoughts and suggestions. At least these suggestions can be repeated in public.