Compacting a paver base
Plate compactors and rammers both compact ground, and they are not alternatives. A plate compactor works by vibration across a flat plate and suits granular material: sand, gravel, crushed stone, and the bedding layers under paving.
A rammer, also called a jumping jack, works by impact on a small foot and suits cohesive soils and confined spaces such as trenches, where a wide plate cannot reach and where vibration alone does less. The material and the width of the space decide which machine the job wants, and a paver base usually wants the plate.
Placing and levelling concrete
A power screed levels wet concrete to the height of the forms, replacing the two person straightedge that used to do the same job by hand. A concrete vibrator works from inside the pour instead, driving out trapped air so the concrete consolidates around reinforcement and against the formwork.
They address different problems in the same pour. The screed deals with the surface and the vibrator with what is underneath it, and a slab with reinforcement in it or formed edges to fill generally wants both.
Finishing concrete
A power trowel polishes the surface of a slab once it has set enough to be worked, producing the hard, dense finish an industrial or garage floor is expected to have. The same finish can be produced by hand with a float and trowel, and on anything beyond a small pad that is slow work against a clock the concrete is setting.
They come as walk behind machines in a range of diameters, and the area to be finished, not the specification of the concrete is what decides how big a machine makes sense. Timing is governed by the slab, not by the operator, which is why the machine is on site before it is needed instead of fetched when it is.
Cutting pavers and concrete
Concrete saws cover cutting cured slabs, cutting control joints into fresh ones, and cutting pavers and blocks to size. They are the tool that appears on almost every job in this range regardless of which of the others are involved.
What separates the models is blade diameter and how the machine is carried: walk behind saws for floors and slabs, cut off saws for handheld work at edges and on individual units.
Preparing and correcting
Scarifiers remove material from a hardened surface, taking off coatings, levelling high spots and roughening concrete so something new will bond to it. They are the machine for a floor that already exists instead of one being poured.
Concrete sprayers apply liquids across a surface: curing compounds, sealers and release agents, all of which need to go on evenly and quickly over an area larger than a hand sprayer can manage comfortably.
Buying tools rather than hiring
Most of this equipment is available to hire, which is what makes the decision to own it a real one. Owning suits anyone who runs into the same job repeatedly, where hire charges and collection trips accumulate, and anyone who needs the machine on site at short notice because the concrete decides the timetable and not the diary.
For a surface that needs no base at all, the deck tiles range is the other answer. For the paving side of the same project, the granite pavers and cobblestone range covers the stone these machines are used to lay.
Need the pavers themselves? Browse all pavers in porcelain and natural stone.
