Rainwater Topsoil shreds downtime using Hardox® steel

Rainwater Topsoil & Recycled Concrete processes mountains of demanding materials day after day at its Lorton, Virginia, construction and demolition landfill. They’re on a mission of resource recovery. 

A typical landfill processes household, commercial, and general waste, but as a C&D (construction debris recycling) facility, Rainwater sorts, processes and recovers bulky materials like concrete, metal, wood, and asphalt converting them into useable materials including topsoil, mulch and aggregates.

“The name of the game is keeping everything going,” says Scott Livingston, Shop Foreman at Rainwater Topsoil & Recycled Concrete. “Make sure we have as little downtime as possible.”

Concrete, demolition debris and recycled materials don't go easy on equipment. The constant abrasion wears away at steel, while unexpected pieces of metal moving through the process can turn routine wear into sudden failure.

The challenge appeared when core equipment components just weren’t keeping up, causing unexpected and more often wear part replacements. The operation was going down an average of three times a year. Worse yet, downtime could stretch as long as three weeks.

According to Livingston, some critical components wore out quickly, while others completely failed after encountering metal debris in the material stream. Rainwater needed higher performing recycling equipment with key parts that could take the punishment and stay in service longer.

Rainwater experienced first-hand how quickly standard factory parts could lose that fight, and for an operation built around moving and processing material, a machine that's down isn't earning its keep.

For less downtime, Rainwater turned to Clark Machine Corporation, a certified Hardox® Wearparts center. They are Baltimore’s experts in processing Hardox® wear plate to design and build replacement wear parts using just the right grades and thicknesses to outperform conventional wear components.

Clark Machine keeps a wide variety of grades and sizes of Hardox® wear plate on site, allowing its team to react quickly when a customer needs a new wear solution or replacement wear parts. The company also specializes in using 3D scanning technology to capture part dimensions before the workpiece arrives at its facility, helping accelerate the replacement process and reducing out-of-service time.

“Because we’re a certified Hardox® Wearparts Center, and because we use Hardox® wear plate, we build products that outlast other wear parts,” says Tim Bohlman, Sales Manager at Clark Machine Corporation.

Rainwater began upgrading critical wear areas of its equipment with Hardox® wear plate, including the anvil, screens and top wear plate. The results quickly proved the difference.

“Before we had Hardox®, the upkeep was tremendous,” says Scott Livingston, Shop Foreman at Rainwater Topsoil Recycled Concrete.

Today, those Hardox® wear parts last approximately five to six times longer than the factory components they’ve replaced. In some applications, Rainwater can make it through two operating seasons without replacing them.

The longer service life means less maintenance and more uptime when production demands are at their highest.

Proudly serving northern Virginia since 1969, Rainwater Topsoil & Recycled Concrete offers mulch, soil, aggregate, and construction debris disposal for the region. 

Since 1943, and located in Baltimore, Maryland, Clark Machine Corporation offers precision, quality, fast turnaround, and is one of the few facilities on the East coast that handles construction industry equipment parts and repair, industrial maintenance, fabrication, custom building, replacement and precision machining, all under one roof.

From parts to full machines — the best in the world starts with Hardox® wear plate.