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The ColorSelect Pro Liquid Dispenser gives customers peace of mind by providing consistent color batch after batch. Henry Echandi, batch man for Fourth Street Rock Crusher in San Bernardino, CA., prepares to batch a load of color. |
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Integral coloring for ready mix
Technology you can profit from
by Stacey Enesey Klemenc
Because these new systems are much more accurate with dispensing color, many ready mix plants so equipped will guarantee color accuracy for batches as small as two yards.
Solomon says his company recommends a two-yard minimum but, “Our system is accurate enough to get good color mix at one yard.”
But, interjects Paris, “Most ready-mix companies have a minimum of 3 cubic yards.”
As for the percentage of color in a mix, “You can have too much color,” Paris continues. “The intensity of a color rises to a certain level and gets maxed out,” somewhere around 7 percent to 8 percent. “If you go past 8 percent, the color starts displacing the cement and it can reduce the strength of the concrete,” without intensifying the color. “Typically, most color dose rates are 5 percent or below.”
Solomon, who says most of his company’s formulas go as high as 4 percent, adds that operators would have to manually override the software on the new coloring systems to make the percentage go higher. “Theoretically, it’s not going to happen.”
The color load can go as low as .5 percent, he adds, but he recommends the percentage be 1 percent or more to achieve uniform color.
Adding color at the plant shouldn’t have any adverse effects on the concrete, all three men agree, as long as the percentage is around 4 percent to 5 percent and the slump 4 inches or less.
For the ready-mix producers, these integral coloring systems cost in the neighborhood of $40,000, depending on the options selected. There are several ways to obtain a system, including buying it outright or over time with a surcharge added to the color agent or material purchased from the manufacturer of the machinery.
“In ready mix plants, truck time is money,” Solomon says. With these systems, “you can batch out colored concrete just as fast as gray concrete” with a much healthier profit margin. As far as installation labor, integrally colored concrete is less intensive than other decorative techniques.
As contractors, you’ll enjoy anywhere from a 10 percent to 50 percent markup, depending on whom you ask and what part of the country you’re in. The colored product is no more complicated to install than plain gray concrete but, cautions Paris, purchasers of colored concrete have higher standards of appearance then purchasers of uncolored concrete, so contractors need to raise their level of workmanship to meet increased expectations.
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