Efficiency of Automatic Wall Plastering Machine

Sounds great, when it works.

With no meaningful information to use for analysis, all I can say is get a demonstration and see what you think.

Let's assume it will do a 20 foot section of wall (since you give no details) in half the time as a human. (again, not details)

Now, if the machine works as advertised, you have 20 feet of good wall in half the time.

If the machine does not work as advertised, you have 20 feet of defective wall to remove and replace, and since you fired all the skilled plasterers, already, you'll spend 5 times as long fixing the 20 feet defective wall that the machine did.

Flip a coin, or provide some meaningful information.

So now you provide some info about the specific machine?

I recommend the LynDoor™ Oscar Madison^® machine, which throws stuff at the wall, with the stuff remaining there some days later.

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It doesn't take a genius to figure out an automatic application/squeegee machine for cheap wall covering.

By all means, buy this cheap contraption and do away with the expense and bother of dealing with humans.

AP#1, at LynDoor, we screen our clientele and would very likely adjust our prices upward dramatically in the case of this applicator.

Hold harmless and non disclosure agreements would likely be onerous for this client, as well.

It's called being efficiently plastered.

That unit would be great for large walls where access is easy.

Setup time would make it non-beneficial were the walls were short or with many columns to work around or other contours.

Clutter where multi trades are at work could make it an unpopular process and you will lose time waiting for access where a plasterer with hand tools could just get in and on with it.

Exterior faces could be OK as they are big but then there's the curtilage terrain and adjoining properties to deal with and there's no way for it to brace itself to the sky....

Here's one in action.

It doesn't appear to be that much faster than a skilled tradesman. It would still require hand floating to get it dead on.

You'll still need a plasterer to do the lintels, corners and other detailing.

Also, if the juice is off, frequently on a job big enough to warrant experimenting with this machine, then there isn't any mud being spread on the walls.

Your call mate.

I'm building some apartments at present with loads of rendering work and that wouldn't save me a cent. It would get broken in no time.

My opinion is based on experience, not with that machine, but from hectares of manual rendering works.

What's the cost of labour where you are?

This, on the other hand, I could use.

Terry thanks for your views. Please see www.ezrenda.com. The machine needs to be attended by two workers. They will produce 500m2 of plastered walls in 8 hours. Labor in Greece costs 8 USD/hour. In this country, plastering done manually involves three stages: coarse layer, intermediate layer, fine layer (containing marble powder). Maybe the automatic machine gets away with one layer only (max. thickness: 30mm).

My idea is to offer just the plastering work including the mortar material. What is the usual thickness of the plastering done in your area? There is a factory here that offers a special premixed plaster that is thermally insulating. You gave me the idea of offering the chasing too. But then I need to coordinate with the electrician doing the electrical installation. Please let me know what you think. Regards, Chris

Who is Terry?

Maybe with those labour rates you will win.

Render thickness here is 10mm nominal. The bricks here are non uniform in size so the thickness varies a bit to compensate for that.

With a 30mm render thickness cracking is guaranteed.

Render process here is render mud smoothed off then a skim coat to make it dead smooth followed by painting. No skim coat where tiles are being placed.

Wall chasing...."I" chase after rendering but before skim coating/tiling. The uneven naked brick faces make pre render chasing and pipe/conduit placement along with the switch boxes and plumbing terminations difficult to set at the correct depth so that things end up flush with the render/tile face..... impossible to achieve reliably.

Summary: brick work, render, mark out chasing for the services, chase, install services, patch render then skim coat/tile.

When you try to prechase and then leave gaps in the render for the services it slows things down too much.

This mighty chasing tool looks like the bomb!

Hi there! Thought your name was Terry.

All your points are valid and appreciated. I am a novice in this so some of my questions may sound quite naive. I do have your understanding I hope.

Do you prepare your render mud and skim coating mortar yourself right on the spot? On larger projects and with the deployment of the automatic rendering machines a would imagine that a continuous feeding of materials might be in order which in turn means mechanical mixing at the ground level and pumping up at the consumption floor. Please comment.

Marking out for chasing is done in coordination with the plumber and the electrician?

Have a good day! Regards, Chris

Marking out for chasing is done in coordination with the plumber and the electrician?

Naturally.

Could you please reply the other questions too?

Yes the rendering mud is mixed on site here. Sometimes right near the faces being rendered sometimes at a designated batching area...depends.

There is no reason you couldn't mass batch and distribute on a large job. I saw one job in Sydney (so there would be others) where the mortar arrived in cement trucks and pumped through a distribution system to where it was needed. Big Big job.

You need to have the space for that sort of infrastructure.

Really large construction sites here have centralised batching plant for concrete and mortar and is delivered to where it's needed by the site's crane(s). They have space.

Mostly here there isn't space. I buy premixed concrete and pump it into place. All over quickly and little or no mess. Doesn't piss off neighbours for months...

But mortar is done, as you say, on the spot. Dry materials hand carried to wherever, usually up stairs, and the water brings itself up courtesy of the municipal water supply pressure.

Labour is cheaper here if your opportunity costs are low. ie if it doesn't matter if it takes longer or has to be reworked...

The problem is not when it works. The problem is when a tiny part breaks. I have a 600 dollar generator in my back yard which needs a new float in the carb. NOBODY around here can fix it. Or is willing to go into a Chinese generator to figure out what is going wrong.

That machine does not go any faster than a good plaster man. If your plaster is going on too slow, find a different man, or get your man trained. Would you save money with the machine over a month? Maybe. Depends on too many variables. I think you would save money the first month, maybe the first six months. After that, your machine will go out of adjustment, out of line, or just plain break. Furthermore, it will be a problem to get workers to the job site do anything complicated, their union will keep them away.

That being said, I never used such a machine, though I have used similar to smooth out shot crete. The forseeable problems seem insurmountable by a cheap machine...and the unforseeble problems will still have to be always fixed by the good plasterer. With labour relations in Greece being what I have observed...if you lose your guy, you won't get him back. So, learn to do some stuff yourself and pay him a decent wage.

Thanks but some of your assumptions are wrong. The machine is not cheap. It can plaster 500m2 in 8 hours. Workers here are not unionized. Handling and feeding the machine seem to be quite straightforward. Please go to the site and view the demo video. Then I'll be interested in reading your comments

Saw the demo. Was not impressed. Two workers are required to operate the machine. Two workers can do more and better in the same time. Perhaps you feel that you would not have to spend as much for skilled workers if you had a machine. You will still need skills...just mechanic skills instead of plastering skills.

Upside....good on warehouse walls. But then, why plaster a warehouse wall?

Downside....will trouble with the irregular walls I witnessed in Greece and cyprus. Some parts will be very thick. Other parts will be very thin. There WILL be cracking. Why do you suppose there is the three layer method used now? Is this a mystery or do you think they do it because it has a fine history of working.

I think you will still need to install a scratch coat and a finish coat. The final coat is too thin to install with this machine since it is the finish coat which gets painted. Done lots of plastering in my life.....it is still used over here in wet, cold and windy Canada when you need to fix problem walls. Otherwise, we use sheet rock and gypsum board which go up MUCH quicker than plaster. Why do you not like sheet rock panels?

So you can spam (promote) this machine all you want. I would find it difficult, insufficient to requirements in my contracting business, and yet another maintenance problem. It would not be my first choice of ways to do any job other than perhaps a huge wall, like a warehouse you are trying to turn into cheap condo apartments.

But that being said...if you DO pick up this piece of equipment, find out who can do maintenance on it. This is my best advice. Having spent a few thousand dollars in the last two years on equipment which does not have any way to get fixed...I am starting to buy American, Canadian and British again.

Thanks for sharing your views. They come from practice and past experience and they are in good faith. I am not promoting any machine. I am questioning it. How on earth I could had profited in Greece by spamming Chinese stuff in Canada? My interest is genuine but I do not know much about plastering. I intend to learn though. The machine is forgiving irregularities up to 30mm (the max thickness of render obtainable in one pass). Avoiding cracks I believe is more a question of the mud mix design and less of render thickness. Suppose I could service the machine and that I get 500m2 a day of ready to paint wall surface. What would you say in this case? How many m2 two skilled plasterers could plaster per day?

Your call. I have seen some stunningly good plaster workers in Cyprus and Greece and of course famously Italy. They go fast and do a very good job. My impression is that they produced walls much faster than the video shows, particularly around difficult walls with electrical outlets and column features. Only cheap way to find out would be to go to China and see it in use.

I guess your SOL if theres no electrical power on the job site, huh?