How to keep in shape when you're not splitting wood

[madrone]

I spent yesterday busting up a 20' x 40' concrete driveway in my backyard. It's been the plan since I bought the place 5 years ago, but I finally got the nerve to do it. The previous owner told me he'd wanted to do it, but it seemed like too big a job. No fooling.
I used a 60lb. Makita 15 amp electric jackhammer, and a pair of prybars. The first discovery was that the perimeter is about a foot thick. Most of the concrete is a high ratio of large aggregate, which was difficult to work. Other areas had almost no aggregate at all, so the jackhammer just punched a clean hole in it. Luckily, no rebar. The next discovery was a second slab underneath, about 10' x 20'. It looks like they didn't bother to prep the area in any way, just dug out the perimeter, put up some boards, and just poured and poured until it was about 4 inches thick over the old slab. As a result, the thickness varies from 2 inches, to 12 inches. Nice work, guys.
Now, I get to haul all this away.

 

[begreen]

Looks like good material for a retaining wall. Advertise as such on craigslist and let them haul it away.

 

[Highbeam]

I broke out a similar sized patio last summer. I ended up hauling the debris to a pile in the backyard with the tractor. Then when I got a chance I loaded it into the F350 one chunk at a time and hauled it to a friend's ravine to use as fill. I could have dumped it for 15$ per truckload at a quarry that crushes it up and uses it as aggregate in new concrete but the buddy wanted his ravine filled. The electric jackhammer is what I used too. Ran it with my genset to get full power and for the sake of running the genset.

Lame thing that I discovered is that as you get to the middle of the slab you can't break off chunks anymore. Even the cracks are much harder to create. I needed to pry out the chunks to make room to break off more chunks.

I poured a new 36x20 foot patio in its place. What are you going to do there? More grass?

 

[madrone]

Looks like good material for a retaining wall. Advertise as such on craigslist and let them haul it away.

I had this thought, but I didn't want to be like one of those CL guys with the "free" firewood in tree form. I suppose there's someone out there looking for this kind of thing. I checked to see if anyone wanted fill, but they all want it delivered, and much further than I'd like to haul it. The alternative is paying for a drop box, so I suppose it's worth a shot.

 

[madrone]

Lame thing that I discovered is that as you get to the middle of the slab you can't break off chunks anymore. Even the cracks are much harder to create. I needed to pry out the chunks to make room to break off more chunks.

I poured a new 36x20 foot patio in its place. What are you going to do there? More grass?

I had to stop and grab the pry bar every few feet, and lift up the chunks to make some room for them to break off. Oddly, the thinnest part was the hardest because of the lack of aggregate. If I drove in too straight, the jackhammer would just drive straight through and stick in the clay. If I worked at a bit of an angle, the top 1" of the slab would shear off but the bottom would remain.

More grass. I have plenty of concrete along side the house, and I'll be adding a covered deck off the house this year or next, so I had no need for that much concrete. It was in pretty bad shape, probably 50 years old and not great to begin with.

 

[billb3]

I just about finished a 40 by 150 foot slab foundation.
No jack hammer, just a sledge hammer.


and a CUT Tractor with a loader and back hoe.

Still a lot of work and it wasn't all on the seat. Had to swing that sledge more than I wanted to bust up long peices of footing.
Concrete is tough on the hands, knees pants, shoes and back.

My fill hole is about 500 feet away.

Bustin up concrete even with a jack hammer is a lot of work.

I had tons of ants in spots.

 

[madrone]

That's the way to do it, Bill. If I were to do it over, I'd get a hold of a backhoe and have a drop box delivered the same day. I did the first 25 sqft or so with only a sledgehammer, but that was about enough.

 

[mkirschner]

I did a similar project a couple of summers ago, albeit a bit smaller in scale. It was a large patio area in our backyard, also with a 60lb electric breaker, and also with the unpleasant discovery of a smaller slab underneath (which we decided to just leave alone).

We were clearing the area to put in raised garden beds, and we re-used the broken concrete to make the bed walls, so we didn't have a disposal issue.

I agree you could probably find people to take it away on CL, especially in the Portland area. It's a shame to put that in a landfill when it could be used for retaining walls, garden bed walls, etc.

Mitch

 

[madrone]

Good call on the CL listing. I've had a bunch of responses, and one trailer and one trunk load removed. It hardly put a dent in it, but they're coming back for more in a couple of days. I definitely like the idea of it getting used for something rather than dumped. I'll probably end up hauling all the tiny bits away in a drop box but it'll be a much smaller one, I hope.