A local company sells concrete crushed to the same size as #3 stone for $8.50/ton. It's not as uniform as #3 stone as it has some smaller pieces. The company claims it supports weight better than stone due to the shape of the chunks. I'm thinking about trying a load.
I spread thousands of tons of recycled concrete, Bote. Before you buy any, look very closely for pieces of wire and rebar in it. Our trucks had 21 flat tires in one week driving over that stuff. It won't be laying loose in the material because the conveyor magnet should remove it. It would be protruding from the pieces of concrete. Maybe it doesn't matter in your situation if it is contaminated with steel.
I got one or two loads of it before I realized what Tinkerer above said. I can't positively blame the concrete for any flats, but there were a number of pieces that had steel in it. I don't see it available around here anymore. I was also told that state and counties have some new process for recycling asphalt and are not making it available as much anymore. It too, has become very scarce around here.
I think you will like the crushed concrete, as long as it has been through a plant with a magnet. I ran a recycling plant once for about a year. Our products had no metal in them, as the magnet would collect all metal. With material sized as you are talking about, no metal should be present, as the magnet will pick up the metal, even if it is stuck in a piece of rock, and the rock will go out into the metal pile with the steel. Crushed concrete also becomes a little "reactive" after crushing, so when you spread a fresh pile of recycled material, it may partially set up, like it has a bag of cement mixed into it. This depends on how much fines is in the product. If possible, go look at the material you want to buy, before you get it on your jobsite. Jeff
#3 stone is rated at 1/2" to 2". May be okay for a bottom base or drain field but I wouldn't want to drive on it. I bought 54 yards of crushed concrete graded to 3/4" a few years back for our road. It has performed great so far. I haven't seen any steel in what we bought and the size was very uniform. I was encouraged to try it by one of our County road folks and told it has a higher compaction rate than the limestone they had been using. It was costly back then and I think they want more for it now. I paid $375 a load for three 18 ton loads delivered. The company I bought it from had delivery drivers that had the dumping down to a science. They had automated tail gates and knew exactly how far to open the gates and how fast to drive to leave a uniform 4" thick layer. It would leave a pile right where they began but the rest of the spread was perfect. I had the county road grader on hand to do a final grade and pack but his need was limited. I did have him grade and shape the surface before the crushed concrete was dumped. The whole approximate 600 ft stretch was done in an hour. I have graded it a few times with my landscape rake or grader blade but the maintenance has been minimal. Maybe 4 times in 3 years. I have looked at some from another supplier I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. Way too trashy and irregular looking. I talked to a third source local that says they sell it screened to 3/4" for $200 for 18 yards but they don't deliver. I don't expect I will ever get the neighbors to go along with buying more but if they ever do I will go look at that material and get pricing for delivery. DO NOT confuse crushed concrete with what they call washout. Washout is the leftover crap they wash out of concrete trucks. It won't stay and is extremely dusty. Crushed concrete gets dusty when dry but not any worse than dirt IMO.
Is the $8.50 a ton at the quarry or delivered? If it's delivered that's a hell of a price and if it's at the quarry that's cheap as hell. I would look at the actual material before buying.. Same here. ALDOT requires all millings to be ran back across the scale and credited back to the state. We used to be able to get milling all the time but it's dried up as they run it back through the asphalt plant. Also I'm going to move this thread from the Backhoe forum to General Industry Questions, it's better suited there.
I have been buying RCA (Recycled Concrete Aggregate) for many years. There was (just closed...Covid??) a place like 2 min from my job, so I could go there on lunch and they would scale you...Anyhow, the stuff is great. once it packs it is really tight and holds up. All the paver guys in my area use it for the base under the pavers before adding the stone dust. The stuff I was getting was ~3/4" and less. I never got any of the metal discussed, so I am guessing the place had a magnet running. Funny thing is, my place in PA, they look at me like I am crazy when I ask for it...like they never herd of recycling concrete and bricks. I guess the landfill rates are so cheap the concrete isn't worth recycling up there.
I've been hearing the ecology people around here are saying that the stuff affects any water that percolates through it and is bad for fish. The asphalt grindings are coveted but the crushed concrete, not so much. Maybe the construction guys can provide some better information.
I too have used a bunch of it over the years. Here is the big CAVEAT! It sets up, like concrete. Give it water and time and it becomes as one piece. I worked a church job where they brought in the deep sewer manholes and backfilled with recycled, then the job sat for a few years. Unfortunately for me, they got it a wee bit high for the parking lot grade, and I smoked a couple of sets of tiger teeth screeching it down ahead of the pavers. Be darn sure you want it where you want it. It does not dig well later.
Thanks for the tips. It's $8.50 picked up or $12.50 delivered. It looks like a great base material. Seems like the definitions for crushed stone vary by quarry but I buy #3 limestone from a local quarry for $15/ton picked up. It works well for stabilizing my soft ground. I plan to put a layer of dense grade on top. I think the recycled concrete could be a cheaper/better alternative to the #3 limestone. First place for it is the big holes where I got my machine stuck Sunday. https://www.heflininc.com/services
Sounds like what you got was washout. I did a parking lot with washout years ago. Parts of it set up like a slab and the rest just made abrasive dust. The dust was very unpopular with my customers. I haven't seen the crushed material we got do this. It does seem to be getting less gravel size but I can grade ours like it's any other gravel.
This is just speculation on my part but I think one issue with the asphalt millings is oil contaminatiom from vehicles. This and the fact that it compacts into chunks is why I think our local county has been instructed to stop using it. I have heard it is much like the problem outlined above with washout concrete. It packs into large chunks that can't be graded after the fact.
Here are a couple of pics of my road I did with the 3/4" crushed concrete. It wears and packs to look like it's all fine dust with pea gravel size pieces but it you run over it with a grader it brings the larger gravel back to the top. Before putting this down we had a good size low spot that made a mud puddle in the rain. You could fill and grade it and it would come right back after a few rains. I had the road graded before and after putting the crushed concrete down and the low spot has not reformed. This was put down in May of 2018 and the photo was taken today, May 25, 2021. I think it's been 6 months since I did any grading on it and it was minimal.
Here is another crushed product I discovered last year that I am crazy about. It's pretty pricey but it looks great in my barn. Crushed red brick.
The RCA that I have purchased in the past has the bricks in with the concrete. I think the local masons paid to dump, and they mixed it in with the piles of concrete...I miss that place...it was so close, and cheap, and the stuff was awesome!
Be careful with brick if it is crushed kind of coarse. It will have very sharp edges that will cut tires, or people. I bought a portable crushing plant to use at our brick plants. We crushed a lot of old inventory that would never sell. The products, if sorted by color before crushing, looked very nice. Some cities really liked our reddish colored material for use on street medians. We found that something like a 1" or 11/4" down, was about right. Coarser material had lots of razor sharp edges.
Interesting about recycled bricks. There is a brick factory 4 miles from me. I watched several hundred loads of bricks get buried in field 1/2 mile from the factory. What a waste !
No, I saw both ends of the product, the concrete pile, the crusher, and this 1" minus. it was great but not to dig after.
Same here, A local brick plant is about 10 miles away... But they have a crusher and sell the crushed bricks. Lots of local landscaping folks use it.... by the looks around town.
Both the crushed brick and concrete that I bought were screened to no larger than 3/4". I guess whatever doesn't pass through the screener gets sold as courser material or run back through the crusher.
Wow, that is a waste. The crushed up brick at all 20 of our plants was either sold, or reused in newly made brick. We called it "grog", it was crushed finer, and added back into the wet clay brick mixture. This coarse material, helped heat transfer through the brick better when it was fired in the kiln. If we ran out of crushed brick, then we had to add a costly material called "calcine". This was a partially fired material we made in a rotary kiln, and making it burned lots of natural gas. Another name for it was "clinker". The plant that buried the brick, must have had a huge amount of waste brick, or did not recycle it back into their new product. With that kind of waste, I don't know how they stayed in business.
I'm guessing the concrete would have the powder and dust all through it. Concrete and lime would raise the PH of water maybe? Asphalt is made from oil. We don't recycle asphalt here. They screen the millings and use it for shoulder material after we pave. Depending on how sticky it is, it can be hard to grade, but it makes great shoulder material once rolled. I know when they use the train, they add a concrete like powder, and they have to put silt fence all around the area where they store it on site. Never need silt fence for asphalt millings laydown area. I guess they do recycle it when they use the train.
Recycled concrete is great, i've never ran into it setting up though, I kinda wish it would a bit actually, it turns up easy from equipment at my yard like gravel. But water drains through better and it doesn't get muddy nearly as bad as gravel. That is so cheap though, I think it's about $20/ton here and that's only crushed to 65mm generally.
Wow. Around here they could've sold the bricks as seconds. Built a house in 2000 and bought Bickerstaff's (which is now owned by Boral) seconds and non-spec runs since the brick was going to be mortar washed. The house looked like a calico cat which had the neighbors raising an eyebrow but once the mortar wash went on it looked like a million bucks.
Yes, that is a good way to use brick that comes out of the kiln in some off color. We had a part of the plants where they actually would take all the brick "mistakes", throw it in a rotary tumbler, and dump in a cement slurry. The coated brick was stacked wet on pallets and allowed to dry before selling it. We called this "slurry brick" or "rumble brick". When a house was built with it, it gave the house kind of a gray brick color, with color highlites showing from the original brick colors. Kind of a nice look, and different than other nearby houses in a new development.
My former neighbor does demolition. Old bricks are more popular than new and the old "clinker" bricks bring the most money. He would have crews cleaning off bricks and strapping them on pallets. I think he made good money selling them to a brick outfit.
As long as they have good mags on the plant I don't have an issue with recycled 'crete. It's like everyone else said and metal starts to slip past I have issues with it, I pay enough in tires, don't need help.
I had another brief encounter with a recycled glass product. One needle was all it took to make that very unpopular. It was physically great for wall backfill. No way to keep junkie's stainless needles out of it.
MM I built a 60+ unit townhome project back in the mid 2000's that had a brick very similar to what you describe. It was a tan colored wash which gave the mortar wash looked just didn't have the labor and material cost to mortar wash.