Concrete is a mixture of sand and cement, mixed in the proper proportions. The purpose of mixing concrete is to get it into a cohesive state, so that the particles are held together by forces of attraction rather than gravity; otherwise concrete will crack.

If you don’t mix the concrete properly, it will crack. If you don’t mix it the right way, a lot of the time it will crack. If you mix it too much, sometimes it won’t crack at all.

There are five main mistakes people make when mixing concrete:

1. Not using enough water 2. Using too much water 3. Adding too little water 4. Having an uneven mix 5. Not keeping the mix wet enough

There are five common mistakes when mixing concrete. You wouldn’t expect there to be: it’s the boring, repetitive work of the world’s most boring industry. But they happen all the time.

For example, many experienced concrete contractors mix their concrete too stiffly, so that it cracks after it is poured. This means that a slab that would have withstood hundreds of tons of pressure will now instantly collapse under five tons. Or they add too many air pockets to their slabs and end up with slabs that swell like bricks in the rain or sun and crumble under their own weight.

One of the worst mistakes you can make is using water-based mortar instead of cement-based one. This results in a weak, permeable layer that easily dissolves by absorbing moisture from water; in extreme cases this will even cause cracks to appear around the perimeter of your house.

Another common mistake is adding too much sand to your mix. Sand is fine for supporting a building but it makes concrete hard, stiff and slow-setting, which slows down the process by which water becomes transformed into hardened concrete. It is also very dusty, which makes construction more difficult and uncomfortable for workers and passersby alike.

I mix concrete for a living. I’ve been doing it for 25 years, and I’m not going to stop until I can’t do it anymore. I’ve seen the work-life balance of many a contractor, and it’s hard to be married and have a family when you’re working all the time.

It takes a certain kind of personality to do this job well. You have to love concrete, but you also have to be patient, diligent and willing to get your hands dirty. If you can’t deal with these things, if you can’t take a day off when your back aches or when your kids are sick, or if you can’t handle some of the inconveniences that come with the job, don’t do it.

I’ve been mixing concrete long enough to know there are five things you need to do right every day if you want your work to be good:

1) Mix the concrete right-on-time – this is where most people fail

2) Add the correct amount of water – there is no substitute for knowing how much water goes into each batch

3) Do not skimp on material – less is more in this case; whether its sand or cement, too little means too weak; too much means too strong

You will not make better concrete if you mix it incorrectly. By mixing concrete incorrectly in the first place, you are wasting energy and materials, and reducing the life span of the concrete. You will not make better concrete if you don’t use the proper equipment. Using a long handle trowel makes mixing a breeze, and ensures that you get even distribution of material. You will not make better concrete if you don’t put down a plastic sheet before mixing. A plastic sheet helps keep the mixing surface clean, and reduces the amount of dust that can be kicked up during mixing. You will not make better concrete if you don’t use the proper tools for the job. For example, a long handled trowel is more likely to break up large chunks of material than a small one, and makes mixing a breeze.

Cement is a very stable material, but in its natural state it is quite a soft powder. If you mix it by hand, it will never form a solid mass; instead it will form a loose powdery mass, which can be carried away by the wind or other very small particles.

This makes the first mistake: people who try to mix their own concrete by hand tend to do so by simply mixing the dry cement powder with water and stirring. The result is that the cement has not had time to set properly, so any subsequent additions of liquid will just get diluted. And no matter how much water you add, eventually the mixture will dry up and you won’t have any more cement.

The second mistake is to try and make concrete in a large quantity at one time; what happens is that each batch of cement takes forever to dry, and if you keep adding batches one after another they will never all finish drying at the same time. They will all be lumpy and gooey as they are drying.

The third mistake is to add too much water to the mixture; you need only enough water to make sure that when the mixture dries it forms an unbroken mass with no lumps or cracks.

The fourth mistake is to let the

When you mix concrete, it should be done in a trampoline. For reasons that are not obvious to me, this doesn’t work. When you mix concrete in a trampoline, the larger portion of the powder falls to the bottom of the container and is pushed to the side by the smaller flow of liquid coming down from above. This means that when you pour the liquid out of the top and onto the cement, some of it will mix with the powder in the bottom. This can result in an uneven mixture, with some spots where cement doesn’t have enough water to close up completely.

So what you need to do instead is mix all the powder into one big batch, then pour it out onto a table or counter-top. Then you can use kitchen utensils to separate out any leftover powder bits that fall through and keep them for mixing next time.

In the old days, concrete was poured into 3-foot square pans, and left to set in the sun. It had to be like concrete: hard and tough, but still flexible. Today you can buy ready-mixed concrete, but it doesn’t work quite the same way as the old kind. Or at least that’s what everyone thought.

Concrete is an amazing substance, one of nature’s great achievements. I’ve been mixing concrete for over 30 years and I still can’t quite believe how versatile it is. As far as I know, humans have only been using it for two thousand years or so; before that they were pouring it into baskets and leaving it to set in the rain.