Bags Of Concrete Mix - Where? Price?

[aussiebebe]

Hi everyone,

I need to buy general purpose concrete mix, the kind you add water to for making paths and steps. I tried Home Pro, but no, does anyone know the rough price for a bag (25kg?) I should expect?

thanks

[chiang mai]

I'll be surprised if this thread teaches me that pre-packed concrete mix is available here, most people would simply buy cement and mix it themselves, after all, why would Thai's want to pay for gravel cement when most of the time they can get gravel for free, I think this is very much of a Western product.

[aussiebebe]

Thanks for the reply, I dont have any free gravel or any experience of this. I should buy cement, sand and gravel seperately, right?

[chiang mai]

Thanks for the reply, I dont have any free gravel or any experience of this. I should buy cement, sand and gravel seperately, right?

I think that's probably the best (and cheapest) approach, I've never seen the pre mixed stuff for sale anywhere here.

[jackr]

Actually it's available everywhere. The best brand is Tiger, which comes in blue and green bags. The blue is coarse and is for making concrete when mixing with gravel and for building walls, while the green is mainly for rendering although you can also rough render with the blue. They both come in 50kg bags and are roughly the same price. The random hardware places on the side of the road will charge around 90 baht per bag... the green is generally the pricier of the two. The cheapest I've seen is at Home Mart, with 73 baht for the blue and 80 for the green. The likes of Home Pro and Global don't do it, although they both do Lanko skimmers in tubs and bags... Global being the cheapest.

If you don't have a Home Mart, look for a place that does bricks and blocks and they'll almost definitely have a shed with them in. They will also invariably do sand, cement (about 100 baht), and gravel. That is the cheapest option for doing stuff en-masse, but is also the messiest and you'll need it delivering. I've done loads of projects around the house using the Tiger premix and it saves a lot of mucking about.

[chiang mai]

I'm surprised, useful to know however, thanks.

[canopy]

Good topic. So then just to verify one can find premixed cement-sand, but not the all in one cement-sand-gravel like Quikrete that you just add water to? The premix I have seen in Thailand is called mortar mix and I did not see a cement:sand ratio or even a strength rating on it.

I am wanting to lay foundation footings and would prefer premix for accuracy since mixing will be done by hand though it begs the question can one trust the accuracy of these mixed bags or might they be botched by somchai doing the mixing? Otherwise if going from scrach I am thinking 1:2:4 portland cement:sand:gravel for workability and proportions that are likely to be mistake proof. Thoughts?