If you are planning on making a patio for your house, you may look at having a concrete patio. Concrete can be dyed or stamped in order to make it look like just about anything. It is also fairly durable and long lasting, especially if you make sure it's sealed to help keep moisture out of it. But how are you going to mix and pour the concrete?

Pre-Mixed Concrete

One thing you can do that will make things easier is buy bags that have all the ingredients for concrete except water mixed together. You can buy as many bags as you need to have. The nice thing about using pre-mixed bags is that you don't have to worry about doing any measuring other than the measuring required to make sure that you put in enough water to make the concrete workable. Another reason to get these bags of pre-mixed concrete is that you can save the bags if you don't use all the contents. Make sure that you store the mix in a water-tight container if you do save it; moisture getting into the bags may mean that you end up with a bag full of solid concrete. You can also choose to buy all the necessary ingredients for the concrete separately if you choose to do that. 

Hand Mixing

One way to mix your concrete is to do it all by hand. If you are going to do that, then you are going to need something like a wheelbarrow to mix the concrete in. That's because once the concrete is mixed, you are going to need to have a way to transport the concrete to your patio site and pour it. A wheelbarrow works for both of these things. You can put the wheelbarrow near your work space and then just move it to where you need to pour the concrete.

Machine Mixing

If you don't want to take the time to mix all your concrete by hand, you do have another option. You can rent a concrete mixer from an equipment-rental company, such as LAX Equipment Rental. The employees at the company will rent you the mixer and tell you how to use it. The nice thing about using a concrete mixer is that you don't have to worry about making sure that everything is mixed well. When the machine is done mixing the concrete, you can just pour the concrete in the wheelbarrow and take it over to where your patio is going to be. 

If you are going to pour a concrete patio, you need to make sure that you have the tools that you need in order to get the job done right.