Concrete Pumping in Nairobi: Boom and Line Pumps

When you need a pump

Two quite different situations, and they call for different equipment.

Height. Anything above ground floor. Barrowing concrete up scaffolding is slow, and slow is the enemy of a monolithic pour: the first barrow has begun to set before the last one arrives, and you get cold joints across a slab that was supposed to be continuous.

Reach. The truck cannot get to the pour. This is the more common one in Nairobi, and it has nothing to do with height. A narrow estate road in Kileleshwa, a gate arch too low on Kiambu Road, a soft verge after rain in Runda, or a plot where the house sits eighty metres back from the boundary.

Boom or line

A boom pump is a truck with a folding placing boom. It sets up quickly, reaches over obstacles and places accurately, and it needs room to deploy its outriggers, which is the thing people forget on a tight site.

A line pump feeds concrete through a hose laid along the ground. Slower per cubic metre, but it goes where a boom cannot: through a side passage, round a completed building, into a basement.

We tell you which one your site needs after looking at it, not over the phone. The wrong choice turns up on the day and cannot do the job, and the concrete is already batched.

Book it with the pour, not on the day

Pumping is a scheduled resource. The single most common way a Nairobi pour goes wrong is deciding on the morning that the truck cannot reach and asking for a pump then, with concrete already in the drum and the clock running on it. Decide the method when you book the concrete.

What the rate covers

Pumping is priced per cubic metre on top of the supply rate, with a minimum. It buys the pump, the operator and the setup. It does not buy the crew placing, compacting and finishing at the far end of the hose, and a pump moving faster than the crew can finish is not helping anyone.