While the grading and excavating teams prepared the base, Stark worked with Curb Roller Manufacturing to design and craft the perfect flume drum. Here Comes the Drum Kraig Pyle, general manager of Curb Roller Manufacturing, worked with Stark throughout the planning process. While the company specializes in custom drums, they’d never designed something of this magnitude before. “We had designed drums as long and as large in diameter, but never with this kind of combination,” Pyle said. “This was so impressive because it had such a large pan and slope wings. We know the capabilities of our product and we were confident tak- ing on this challenge. We knew that with a few adjustments and alterations, we could pull this off and save the contractor time and labor.” Stark officially submitted his order to Curb Roller Manufactur- ing: a 24-foot wide, 1,000-pound hollow rolling flume drum. He calculated the required slope of the sides of the ditch according to MoDOT requirements. Each wing section of the drum was 8 feet wide, with an 8-foot flat pan section in the middle. The drum was 52 inches in diameter with 4:1 backslopes. Since the ditch liner itself is 2 feet deep, they achieved a 25-degree rise by implementing a 1-foot drop for every 4-foot run. Pyle sent Stark a design of the product, which he promptly approved. The company delivered the drum to the jobsite just five days later. Time to Rock & Roll By the time the drum arrived on the jobsite, the Realm Construction team had prepared the first section of the pour with forms, fabric and reinforcement. Not knowing exactly how quickly the pours would go or how much progress they’d make, the team prepared 500 feet of forms. Also onsite was a Takeuchi TL10 compact track loader that provided hydraulic power for the spinning drum, as well as a Telebelt telescopic belt conveyor to place the concrete. The team modified the conveyor to lay the concrete in front of the tube. They began pouring the concrete — a MoDOT hand-finished paving mix with a predetermined slump calculation. “We were allowed to go to 5-inch slump, but we aimed for a 3.5-inch slump because of the slope,” Stark said. “We had more of a problem getting it too wet, which is ok because we just let it dry out.” The wet concrete problem — which can be common on projects like this — wasn’t the only issue during the first day of pouring. “We got the flume all set up and moving it forward wasn’t a prob- lem,” Stark said. “The only problem seemed to be related to the power source. The drum was binding up, but Kraig was on-site and he was determined to figure out a way to make it work efficiently.”
Curb Roller Manufacturing, based out of Fairview, Kansas, has been serving all industries from landscapers to government entities for more than 10 years. When Realm Construction approached them with the custom request, they were eager to engineer a solution. The contractors were also ready to begin the project, but delivering an oversized custom drum to a jobsite had its obstacles. First, Stark had to get approval from MoDOT to implement this unique equipment and process. He presented his case, highlighting the potential for a better finished product and a significantly improved timeline. Matt Daulton, MoDOT resident engineer for the project, reviewed Stark’s proposal and approved with one stipulation — using the Curb Roller couldn’t increase the overall cost of the project. “We try to encourage innovation on every project,” Daulton said. “I had never seen something like this, but our contractors and manufac- turers in the industry often have new ideas and the best answers. So we were open to it.” After gaining clearance from MoDOT, Stark and his team had to work with the grading & excavation subcontractor who was preparing the ditch. The original design of the ditch, before implementing the Curb Roller idea, included varying widths and a flat bottom. This approach would save grading and excavating costs on a traditional concrete project, but the Curb Roller method would require a consistent width to successfully lay concrete. Stark was convinced that the extra cost in grading and excavating would make up for itself in the time savings down the line. “I knew that this would create a more uniform product, which would be easier for MoDOT maintenance to clean out,” Stark said. “The original cross section of the ditch had varying slope widths and lengths through the entire 1,600-foot-long ditch liner. So we had to get the grading team to adjust and create a consistent canvas for the concrete.” By utilizing the Curb Roller custom drum, the contractor estimates a cost savings of 40 percent and more than 740 man-power hours saved on the project.
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csengineermag.com
January 2021
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