I have an old barn foundation about 40x100’ partially buried on my property I’d like to remove as it’s in an ideal spot to build a shop. There are footings around the perimeter wall which is about a foot above grade and the thickness of the pad varies anywhere from 4” to 12” thick. What equipment would be ideal to remove this? Is a concrete breaker a must and if so what size excavator would I need? I imagine an excavator with a thumb would be the way to go for loading it in trucks. Any suggestions appreciated.
I'm getting ready to clean up an old farmstead. Barn, corn crib, hog building and a few other misc buildings to take down. All the buildings have concrete in and around them. I have a komatsu PC200 with a manual thumb that will be used to take out the concrete. Sometimes I use the thumb and sometimes I don't. I like a progressive link hydraulic thumb alot better for concrete but the machine I have that on is at another job at the moment. You shouldn't need a hammer.
Well, it's a bit of work(but so is cleaning up the mess from a hammer), but I prefer to saw cut the slab into manageable squares or rectangles, easy to handle with a thumb or even forks, and the pieces can be repurposed for erosion control or what ever might suit
I don't know about the construction of your concrete but around here barn foundations are 80+ years old and made from poor quality concrete. A large mini would rip out a local foundation without problems. A 20 ton sized machine would have the entire foundation loaded in 5 hours if you have enough trucks. Saws or breakers not needed.
Agreed. Most 'Old' farm concrete has little or no reinforcement and breaks up quite easily. Any decent sized mini excavator or skid steer should break it up with the right technique, a full size excavator or backhoe would do it easily. My uncle busted up and removed hundreds of square feet of old concrete around the farm with just an old Allis Chalmers 170 tractor with a loader, didn't have forks but a manure tine bucket would get under the edge enough to lift/break the pieces. Lift an edge and drop it and usually it breaks, if not a couple wacks with a 16lb sledge did the job. Lather, rinse, repeat until the pieces are small enough for you loader/hoe to lift and haul it off. Taking a breaker and turning it into thousands of tiny pieces is just making a lot more work for yourself.
Thanks for the replies. The quality of concrete seems to be very inconsistent, there are areas like mentioned above where I can easily break it with a sledge, but the majority seems to be very hard. I should have added last year I had a bobcat with a small hammer and it wouldn’t even dent the thicker areas. This is in Ontario Canada so likely the footing is a few feet deep in the ground for frost protection. The wall thickness is 10” thick. There are also 2 sections of pad 12” thick with no relief cuts across 20’ that haven’t cracked in 80 years! The pre-cut method makes sense although a lot of this is buried. Local equipment rental place has a 14,000lb machine I just worry it won’t do anything but be able to dig around the 12” solid pad and the footings. The standard 3-4” pad would be no problem. If I could get a 20ton I think I could lift up the edges of heavy pad and hopefully work it til it breaks. No rebar anywhere from what I can tell.
We used to lift the pieces and drop them. If they didn't break ,we'd lift it and throw a thick piece of concrete under it. Then drop it . It worked well.
I also have broken a lot of concrete like that.
I'm playing around with a rented 10 ton breaking concrete, might find bottles , bricks and other assortments mixed in to make it weaker.
^^This. I have broken many tons of concrete with the "poor mans hammer" technique. OP I'd see if you can find a 20 ton machine to rent.
Removing an old barn foundation, especially one that’s partially buried and varying in thickness, can be a challenging but manageable project with the right equipment. A machine in the 20-30 ton range should have the power you need to handle the concrete foundation effectively. Adding a thumb attachment to the excavator would make it much easier to grab and move large chunks of concrete. This will also help you load the debris into trucks more efficiently.
The response above from Indolift was either a bot or some AI generated crap, notice it just took all the info, summarized it and regurgitated it. The grammar on these is getting better, but still easy to spot. I think AI is going to inadvertently destroy the internet. The more stuff like this, plus fake videos, fake audio, entire articles generated by AI, etc makes me less inclined to trust anything I read or even have the desire to read it in the first place.
By the time you rent a 20 ton, arrange insurance and have it moved you will probably be better off just hiring someone - but that said - where is the fun in that
I would rent larger than a mini. I am a big mini ex guy, but old foundations can be hit or miss. I had one old foundation that had steel cable running the entire loop of the foundation. Also some of that old concrete is far from poor quality. Rent large 130 or larger and use that, especially if some of the pad is 12" thick.
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That 14,000lb mini will break the foundation up just fine, especially seeing it's a rental . . .
I've done lots of concrete busting with a ripper and the weight of large dozers.