A ground pump, fully known as a "concrete ground pump," is extremely rare in China, so it was normal for Lu Dahai not to have seen one.
Fang Bai explained to Lu Dahai, gesturing with both hands: "This ground pump is a construction device that transports concrete through pipelines using pressure.
It can deliver concrete up to a hundred meters vertically, and it can transport dozens of cubic meters of concrete in an hour, unlike how you guys use dump trucks to load it one by one and then send it up with a hoist, which is too inefficient.
The inner diameter of this pipe is about a dozen centimeters, so transporting stones smaller than 50 millimeters is not a problem, but the proportion cannot be too large."
Lu Dahai shook his head and said with a complimentary smile: "Mr. Fang, I really haven't seen the equipment you're talking about.
If it exists, that would be too convenient.
Transporting dozens of cubic meters of concrete in an hour sounds a bit exaggerated.
Currently, it takes four or five dump trucks to transport one cubic meter of concrete, and a single hoist cannot transport 15 cubic meters of concrete in an hour."
Fang Bai fell silent.
One cubic meter of ordinary concrete weighs about 2.2 tons, heavy concrete can reach 2.5 tons, and light concrete is also 1.9 tons.
The dump trucks used on construction sites can hold about 0.2 cubic meters of concrete, roughly five hundred kilograms.
The company's current hoist has one hoist with two motors, and one motor is paired with one elevator position, meaning one dump truck can be loaded.
Therefore, one motor can only pull one truck.
For a three-story building, a double-motor hoist takes more than a minute for each round of transport, so it can transport at most one hundred dump trucks in an hour, which is about 20 cubic meters of concrete, enough to lay approximately 160 square meters of 12 cm thick double-layer floor slab.
The actual situation is not so optimistic; workers also get tired, and concrete mixing may not keep up, so a single hoist with double motors cannot transport 20 cubic meters of concrete in an hour.
For example, the first phase of Xinghai Shopping Mall has a single floor area of 5,000 square meters.
When Lu Dahai and his team poured the floor slabs, they installed two hoist positions, requiring twenty to thirty people to work simultaneously, pouring about two to three hundred square meters of floor slab per hour, and it took two to three days to pour one floor slab.
The higher the floor, the longer the crane transport time, and the lower the concrete pouring efficiency.
Lu Dahai only told him some details, and Fang Bai only needed to ponder for a moment.
Based on the data he knew, he quickly calculated the approximate situation in his mind.
This was the power of the Golden Finger LV4, with a four-fold increase in logical thinking ability.
If there were ground pumps and boom pumps, a ground pump with a power of 70-80 kilowatts could transport dozens of cubic meters of concrete to a vertical height of dozens of meters in an hour, saving a lot of labor.
Recently, Fang Bai had been thinking about what kind of engineering equipment Xinghai Mechanical Company should develop.
He knew that with the rapid development of China's construction industry in the future, the demand for engineering construction equipment would be very high.
Now, he had some ideas, but he needed to do some market research.
"Okay, I'll ask Song Ji and the others to see if they've seen it.
Foreign countries already have this kind of equipment."
"Anyway, in all the years I've been working, I haven't seen the kind of equipment you're talking about, Mr. Fang," Lu Dahai said with great certainty.
"If such equipment exists, I think we should buy one.
The efficiency of concrete pouring is really too low; pushing dump trucks all day makes your hands blister."
Fang Bai nodded.
This kind of equipment is not cheap either.
As far as he knew, a concrete ground pump with tens of kilowatts of power would still sell for hundreds of thousands of yuan twenty years from now.
Industrial equipment was not cheap in those days; only raw materials were a bit cheaper, but prices were not much different from later generations, and some equipment would even be more expensive.
If it was a newly developed product, the price would be even higher.
In those days, only large construction companies could afford it.
Fang Bai chatted with Lu Dahai for a while, telling him to pay attention to construction safety.
Fang Bai found Lin Ping, Song Ji, Li Fugui, and others to inquire about the ground pump, and they all said they had not seen it.
It seemed that this equipment was not yet available.
In fact, what Fang Bai did not quite understand was that China began exploring and developing concrete pumps in the 1970s, and introduced technology to manufacture concrete pumps in the 1980s, but the true meaning of domestic concrete pump manufacturing should start with the establishment of Zoomlion's predecessor, Zoomlion Company, in 1993.
Sany Heavy Industry developed the first large-displacement, high-pressure concrete delivery pump in 1994, which was China's first trailer pump with an independent intellectual property development system.
This was more than a ground pump, as it included a mixing function system.
After more than 20 years of development, China has become the world's largest producer of concrete pumps.
According to relevant data, about 3,000 pump trucks and about 6,500 trailer pumps were sold in 2007.
In the same period, the total output of foreign concrete pumps was only about 12,000 units.
In general, the annual market size of domestic concrete ground pumps, trailer pumps, and boom pump equipment exceeds 20 billion yuan, and it is very stable.
In terms of development difficulty, the simplest is naturally the ground pump, followed by the trailer pump, and the most complex is definitely the boom pump.
Under the same power, the price of a boom pump is more than ten times that of a ground pump.
And the price of foreign products is several times that of domestic ones.
If you want to build buildings dozens or even hundreds of meters high, it's really inconvenient without a concrete delivery pump.
If Fang Bai developed this item and developed it within a year, then Xinghai Mechanical Company would be the first to enter this market.
Relying on his Golden Finger, in terms of product performance, the yet-to-be-established Zoomlion and Sany could not compete with Xinghai Mechanical Company, but how many units could be sold would depend on each company's capabilities.
Perhaps, Sany and Zoomlion, seeing how strong Xinghai Mechanical Company was, would directly change their companies' research and development trajectories.
Fang Bai was temporarily unclear about the concrete pump market situation, but he knew that Sany had not yet entered the construction machinery industry, and Zoomlion had not yet been established, so if he developed it, his company would be the first in China.
Fang Bai returned to the Xinghai Shopping Mall office and saw Qin Shuyu discussing accounting-related knowledge with the accountant.
After lunch at the Xinghai Shopping Mall, Fang Bai took Qin Shuyu to the bookstore to look for information.
Of course, he didn't find the information.
Fang Bai felt that if he wanted to find it, he would have to go to Shanghai Jiaotong University, and it would be best to consult relevant professors, who might have access to relevant foreign materials.
This was the trouble of not having the internet; finding technical information was very difficult.
However, Fang Bai had already decided to develop a ground pump.
Around four o'clock in the afternoon, Secretary Wu Xingyun called Fang Bai, asking him to come to the county compound tomorrow to discuss industrial land matters.
The next morning,
Fang Bai and his father-in-law arrived at the county compound meeting room to discuss industrial land with the County Leader.
The two sides chatted for half an hour, then went to the site for inspection.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, the two sides reached an agreement.
The county would transfer 50 mu of industrial land, with a preferential land price of only 10,000 yuan per mu, limited to valve factory investment.
The location was in the western coastal area of Oubei, Wuxing Village, about five kilometers from Xinghai Shopping Mall.
Nearly three hundred mu of expansion land was also reserved for Jiayu Company, but if Jiayu Company did not invest within eight years, the county would dispose of this vacant land independently.
The location Fang Bai chose was quite good, mainly because of convenient transportation, right next to the future Sunshine Avenue.
The county would plan an industrial park of two to three thousand mu near Jiayu Company, specifically for valve and other small workshop investments, to create a distinctive industrial feature for Yongjia County.
The county would unify the planning and transfer of land, with time limits for construction and investment; the earlier one moved in, the cheaper the land price.
After the planning was completed, the entire county would be notified to prohibit arbitrary construction of industrial workshops, advocating unified relocation to the industrial park, and land designated for future commercial areas would be prohibited from industrial investment.
The land price in commercial areas would then increase.
In fact, ever since Xinghai Company purchased residential land last time, the surrounding land prices have risen sharply, and the land transfer is strictly controlled, with the intention of holding onto it, feeling that after Xinghai Shopping Mall is built, Oubei's land prices will soar.
Fang Bai and his father-in-law settled the land matter, and the subsequent procedures would be handled by his father-in-law.
On August 8th, Fang Bai, his father-in-law, and Qin Shuyu went together to the industrial and commercial department to change Jiayu Company's shares and registration information.
Fang Bai transferred funds to his father-in-law: 500,000 yuan for land purchase and another 1.5 million yuan for building factories, dormitories, and office buildings, with a plan to put them into use a year later.
Currently, Jiayu Company is profitable, and future profits will be used for equipment investment.
Fang Bai and his father-in-law discussed the first valve product, planning to start with the most familiar WCB cast steel gate valve, directly developing medium- and high-pressure valves.
Valve design was Fang Bai's responsibility; he was familiar with this industry and did not need to conduct market research.
He knew the structure and approximate dimensions with his eyes closed.
He practiced designing a 6-inch (DN150) 600-pound class (equal to nominal pressure 10Mpa, PN100) gate valve.
These types of valves are mainly used in temperatures between -29 and 425 ℃, primarily to connect or cut off the medium in pipelines.
The medium's corrosiveness cannot be too strong, and market demand is very large, with extensive applications in oil refining units and hydropower stations.
As for ground pumps, he still needed to slowly research materials and strengthen his learning; he currently did not have the ability to design them.
After Xinghai Mechanical Company recruits design personnel, they will work with research personnel to tackle the problem.