Building a state highway detour in preparation for replacement of a bridge, and today I encountered this huge chunk of concrete just under ground level. It must have been a footing from the bridge previous to the 1962 bridge that is being replaced. It had to come out and state guy said based on its size they will pay me about $3000 extra. But it is too big to lift it onto my lowboy to haul it off - I barely moved it out of the ground with a 210 hoe and a D5 working together- so I need to break it in half or even three pieces. Anybody got an opinion if renting a hammer equipped backhoe for a day will do the trick? That will run about $600. I'm not a demolition guy and have hardly any experience with this sort of thing. Seeking advice.
Build a dirt ramp well compacted w/ the sheepsfoot and at least a foot higher than than the lowbed deck and I see a cat under the bridge that should be able to push it up on the lowbed. Mike
Yair . . . ETMF 58 White. I believe ol'stonebreaker is on the right track but with BHT's like that, rather than build a ramp I always preferred to dig a slot for the trailer. Much easier to push across on level ground or even have the trailer a little low. How would you get it off? Cheers.
Pretty sure hauling that in 1 piece would make the weighmasters quota for the month....... Ed
Well, it would take a few hours with a diamond wet core drill, make a dozen holes and fill them with dexpan, tomorrow you'd have multiple smaller bits of concrete. Is it wire reinforced or just a block? I'm wondering if it was a footing or just the cast off excess concrete, looks about a truckload.
A backhoe hammer is not going to do much with that hunk of concrete anytime soon, it will break it up but it'll take some time. A hoe mounted breaker would handle it but might cost more to rent than your getting paid to break it and get rid of it. After reading the first post Dexpan came to mind as Fast_st suggested. It may be the cheapest way out. Drill 2 lines of holes and break it into 3 pieces. http://www.dexpan.com/dexpan-non-explosive-controlled-demolition-agent-silent-cracking-breaking.aspx I think the chunk is too large to try the poor mans hammer trick.
Good question. If it's a footing won't it be full of rebar too?
Well, a metal detector would show you that, but looking it over, it looks more like go dig a hole over there, we have one extra truck of concrete. Doesn't appear to be a proper footing. I'm not sure if dexpan would crack the steel, it just might. I broke up a dozen car sized boulders, 1.5 inch wet core drill, punch a hole every 12-18 inches, clean them out with a shop vac and then fill with the dexpan mix, come back later. I found on the big rocks, to get the cracks started, put two holes closer together at the edges. The other half of this rock extended another five feet toward the backhoe. The little holes were 5/8 to bolt the core saw down, I used one split anchor to make about 50 holes in different rocks.
Can you pick up one end of it and block it up? Then a breaker might be easier or you could drop another heavy rock or something on it.
I take it they won't let you dig a hole & put it back to rest .
If you have anything to block it up suck as another piece of concrete, try dropping the larger piece on it or dropping it on another piece. The key is to get as much of the chunk off the ground, the ground will absorb the force and once you get t cracking it will break. If you have a 210 size machine with a little work it will break. We break them all the time, most people try a few times and give up. I would give it a shot before you rent a hammer. Also regarding the backhoe hammer or skidsteer hammer they will break it also, you wont need to rent a ex hammer, just block it up and elevate it. That piece will not have much strength on the long flat side. Good Luck
Lots of good ideas here for me to consider. This forum has helped me countless times over the last few years! There is rebar in the chunk, so I'm pretty sure it was a footing of some sort in times past. Scrub's idea of digging a slot for the trailer might be the way to go. There is plenty of room on the right of way to do that. I'm thinking that my D6R could do that quickly and then I can take it and a 700JD and push it across. I will have to measure and make sure the chunk is not longer than the 24 ft in my trailer well. The trash disposal pit is only 2 miles away. Once I get there I think I can drag it off with the 210 hoe that is there. Hope I don't tear up my almost new trailer. BTW, I won't be pushing on the chunk with the dozer you see up under the bridge. It's a brand new dual mast GPS D6K2 from Cat rental. Zero working hours when I picked it up; not even any paint off the blade bits. It won't be me that puts the first dent in it (I hope). I will post a photo of the footing loaded on the trailer when I get that far. Many inches of rain has shut this job down for a while, when normally in August we would be full speed ahead. You think the bank and Cat will agree to stop interest and rent while we are sitting around in the daylight reading HEF on the Internet?
You may want to put some wooden blocks on the trailer to help protect it from the sliding on and off.
Yair . . . Good one ETMF 58 White. Please keep us posted with progress. Hope you get a break in the weather, We are getting TV coverage here in Australia of disastrous floods in the Southern US my thoughts are with all folks affected . . . Keep you and yours and your gear safe. Cheers.
New Orleans is underwater, California is on fire, a plague of invaders crossing our borders by invitation, WW3 ginning up in the Middle East and Europe, anybody seen the fourth horseman?
I'm hoping for a hurricane, we need the water.
Be careful what you wish for!
Same here. All summer has been wet. We were rained out yesterday at 3, spent 1/2 of the day today drying out and getting ready for a compaction test. Tech shows up, punches two holes which passed and then rain dumped at 12:30. If you can get the bank and Cat to stop payments and rent let me know your secret.
Yeah , he went past our place driving a Kenworth .
"flame from the stacks and smoke rollin' black as coal..." mmmmm...
Last I heard he's out on the Martha's Vineyard golf course!! Mike
+100!
Hahahaha!
half a day with a backhoe and decent hammer
If we could figure out how to get some of out equipment operators to be careful around that chunk it would in pieces small enough to pick up by hand in ten minutes!
LMAO! I've worked with that crew, slap some yellow tape on it and warn the operators against damaging it, you'll have pea gravel in short order! :falldownlaugh
Yea those same guys you could lock in a padded cell with an anvil butt necked for five minutes and come back to find it broke to bits and they'd just say they had no idea what happened!
Or put a sign on it that says "Do Not Remove" and somebody will steal it.
A for sale sign works too. Got an old couch or something that's too big or awkward to haul away, put in on the curb with a for sale sign and somebody will think it's worth something and steal it.
A lady in town here had a couple of young men haul her couch to the curb. It sat on a wheelborrow with a "free" sign on it. A bit later the couch set on the ground and the wheelborrow was gone.
Went by a yard with a pile of stuff and a cardboard free sign, right behind the pile was a D4T, I was gonna go and get the trailer in a hurry!
I dug the hole, backed the trailer in and dropped the air bags and the lift cylinders, and pushed the chunk on from the side. And didn't tear anything up either getting it on or off, except scratched the paint on the trailer.
That isn't near as big as it looked to me. That back binder looks a little loose
surge binder.
It was heavy enough that the D6R had to grunt a little bit to get it moved over to the truck, but all-in-all not near as difficult a job as I thought it was going to be when I first encountered it and had trouble getting it dug up and out of the way. After I took the photo I thought to myself that I should have tightened that binder instead of just throwing it over and hooking it, just in case someone would think I hauled it 2 miles up the rural road to the dump area unsecured like that. Which I might or might not have done. And it might have been overwidth on the left side a little bit, so I might have bought a permit and put an Oversize Load sign on and turned on the strobes. :beatsme
I wouldn't have chained it or bought a permit either for just 2 miles down a rural road.
Too bad you weren't closer to my house. I could use a couple of those to put down by the road to help keep cars off my front yard! Just in the last two weeks we have had cars run off the road and across the front yard. One time they punched a hole the width of a car through the Forsythia hedge, the next guy missed the hedge but managed to knock the rocker panel trim off his old Mercury. Neither one bothered to stop and report it or offer to fix hedge. There were at least three other times over the last couple years. This is a more or lest straight section of a state highway, but we do have a few deer in the area that may be one of the causes.
I'm not saying it wasn't big, I meant that once it was on the trailer it didn't look as big to me as it did in the first picture you posted.
Yair . . . Good one ETMF 58 White. Mission accomplished. (grins) Cheers,
It looks like a perfect fit on the trailer. Good work! (I wouldn't have bothered with the chain... ;-) ... )
Might sound stupid but what about jackhammer?
You haven't said what the dump fees were for that chunk. Around my neighborhood I would have broken it (and maybe even recycled) to save on the dump fees.